Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1941. / Typescript. Includes abstract and vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-91).

Recent research has shown that traditional safety evaluation methods have been inadequate in accurately determining the effectiveness of roadway safety measures. In recent years, advanced statistical methods have been utilized in traffic safety studies to more accurately determine the effectiveness of roadway safety measures. These methods, particularly hierarchical Bayesian statistical techniques, have the capabilities to account for the shortcomings of traditional methods. Hierarchical Bayesian modeling is a powerful tool for expressing rich statistical models that more fully reflect a given problem than a simpler model could. This paper uses a hierarchical Bayesian model to analyze the effectiveness of two types of road safety measures: raised medians and cable barriers. Several sites where these safety measures have been implemented in the last 10 years were evaluated using available crash data. This study analyzes the effectiveness of raised medians and cable barriers of roadway safety by determining the effect each has on crash frequency and severity at selected locations. The results of this study show that the installation of a raised median is an effective technique to reduce the overall crash frequency and severity on Utah roadways. The analysis of cable barriers showed that cable barriers were effective in decreasing cross-median crashes and crash severity.

Access management techniques such as raised median installation and driveway consolidation improve safety conditions for motorists. Several locations where these access management techniques have been installed in the state of Utah were selected for analysis of the safety impacts. Although crash rates were not necessarily reduced as a result of the access management techniques, other safety improvements were observed. The raised medians generally reduced the more serious types of collisions, which resulted in a decrease in the severity of crashes. The fatality rates generally decreased as crashes became less severe. Because fatalities and the overall severity of crashes decreased, the overall cost of crashes was reduced. The cost of installing the raised medians was easily recouped by this reduction in the cost of crashes.

Este trabalho visa identificar, a partir de um levantamento de dados dos fluxos de cargas conteinerizadas e custos operacionais de transporte, os locais mais promissores para a instalação de futuros terminais intermodais de carga rodo-ferroviários, com auxílio de um Sistema de Informações Geográficas (TransCAD), objetivando a redução dos custos e otimização das operações logísticas envolvidas na rede de transportes do estado de São Paulo. Simulações são feitas para a instalação de até dez terminais intermodais rodo-ferroviários em pontos estratégicos do interior do Estado, considerando-se duas condições: a primeira com um terminal existente só em Santos e todos os pontos candidatos escolhidos pelo modelo de localização das p-medianas do TransCAD e, a segunda, considerando-se, além de Santos, os oito terminais intermodais já existentes no Estado. Apresenta-se uma análise dos custos de rede e os mapas temáticos de áreas de influência de cada uma das soluções obtidas pelo modelo. Os resultados são comparados com o trabalho de TONDO (1992). Conclui-se que as soluções encontradas através de um novo enfoque de modelagem do problema, são significativamente diferentes daqueles propostos por TONDO (1992). / Based on a data collection of containerized cargo flows and operational transport costs, this study has the objective of identifying promising points to install future road-rail intermodal container terminals, using a Geographic Information System (TransCAD) and the objective function of reducing costs and optimising logistic operations on the transport network of the state of São Paulo. Simulations are presented for the instalation of up to ten road-rail intermodal terminals at strategic locations in the interior of the State, considering two conditions: the first one, with only one terminal placed at the port of Santos and all the candidate points beeing chosen by the p-median location model of TransCAD, and the second one, considering Santos and the other eight existing intermodal terminals in the State. An analysis of the network costs and thematic maps of the influence areas of each solution are presented. The results are compared with the study by TONDO (1992). It is concluded that the solutions obtained by this new modeling focus of the problem, are considerably different from the ones obtained by TONDO (1992).

Este trabalho visa identificar, a partir de um levantamento de dados dos fluxos de cargas conteinerizadas e custos operacionais de transporte, os locais mais promissores para a instalação de futuros terminais intermodais de carga rodo-ferroviários, com auxílio de um Sistema de Informações Geográficas (TransCAD), objetivando a redução dos custos e otimização das operações logísticas envolvidas na rede de transportes do estado de São Paulo. Simulações são feitas para a instalação de até dez terminais intermodais rodo-ferroviários em pontos estratégicos do interior do Estado, considerando-se duas condições: a primeira com um terminal existente só em Santos e todos os pontos candidatos escolhidos pelo modelo de localização das p-medianas do TransCAD e, a segunda, considerando-se, além de Santos, os oito terminais intermodais já existentes no Estado. Apresenta-se uma análise dos custos de rede e os mapas temáticos de áreas de influência de cada uma das soluções obtidas pelo modelo. Os resultados são comparados com o trabalho de TONDO (1992). Conclui-se que as soluções encontradas através de um novo enfoque de modelagem do problema, são significativamente diferentes daqueles propostos por TONDO (1992). / Based on a data collection of containerized cargo flows and operational transport costs, this study has the objective of identifying promising points to install future road-rail intermodal container terminals, using a Geographic Information System (TransCAD) and the objective function of reducing costs and optimising logistic operations on the transport network of the state of São Paulo. Simulations are presented for the instalation of up to ten road-rail intermodal terminals at strategic locations in the interior of the State, considering two conditions: the first one, with only one terminal placed at the port of Santos and all the candidate points beeing chosen by the p-median location model of TransCAD, and the second one, considering Santos and the other eight existing intermodal terminals in the State. An analysis of the network costs and thematic maps of the influence areas of each solution are presented. The results are compared with the study by TONDO (1992). It is concluded that the solutions obtained by this new modeling focus of the problem, are considerably different from the ones obtained by TONDO (1992).

Two way left turn lanes (TWLTL) and raised medians are common median treatments on roadways. This research focused on evaluating the safety effectiveness of conversion of TWLTLs into raised medians using Before-After and Cross Sectional Studies. In the Before-After Studies, we evaluated the effect of this treatment using the Naive, Before-After with Comparison Group (CG), and Before-After with Empirical Bayes (EB) Methods. In order to apply these methods, a total of 33 segments of a treated group and 109 segments of a comparison group have been collected. Also, safety performance functions (SPFs) have been developed using the negative binomial model in order to calibrate crash modification factors (CMF) using the Before-After with Empirical Bayes Method. This research also evaluated the safety effectiveness of this treatment on four and six lane roads using Before-After with CG and Before-After with EB. The type of raised medians was further evaluated using Before-After with CG and EB. In sum, the results from this study show that applying the before-After and Cross Sectional studies have proved that the conversion from a TWLTL to a raised median helped to reduce total, fatal and injury, head on, angle, and left turn crashes. It significantly reduces crashes for head-on and left turn crashes, by restricting turning maneuvers. Also, this study has proved that the treatment is more effective on four rather than six lane roads. Furthermore, two types of raised medians, concrete and lawn curb, were evaluated after the conversion from TWLTLs. It was found that both medians have similar effects due to the conversion, and both median types helped in reducing the number of crashes.

Road Networks play an important role in various applications such as urban and rural planning, infrastructure planning, transportation management, vehicle navigation. Extraction of Roads from Remote Sensed satellite images for updating road database in geographical information systems (GIS) is generally done manually by a human operator. However, manual extraction of roads is time consuming and labor intensive process. In the existing literature, there are a great number of researches published for the purpose of automating the road extraction process. However, automated processes still yield some erroneous and incomplete results and human intervention is still required. The aim of this research is to propose a framework for road network extraction from high spatial resolution multi-spectral imagery (MSI) to improve the accuracy of road extraction systems. The proposed framework begins with a spectral classification using One-class Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) classifiers. Spectral Classification exploits the spectral signature of road surfaces to classify road pixels. Then, an iterative template matching filter is proposed to refine spectral classification results. K-medians clustering algorithm is employed to detect candidate road centerline points. Final road network formation is achieved by Markov Random Fields. The extracted road network is evaluated against a reference dataset using a set of quality metrics.