The iTSS Lab hosted the "2012 iTSS Lab End-of-Year Meeting" where we presented a total of six recently accepted TRB papers. These six papers will be presented in either lectern sessions or poster sessions at the TRB 92nd Annual Meeting, to be held January 13-17, 2013, in Washington, D.C.

Special thanks to Max Perchanok, Heather McClintock, Steve Birmingham, and Dana Baer, (a co-up student) from MTO for their attendance at this event and for actively engaging in fruitful discussions on various projects that the iTSS lab is currenlty involved in.

The iTSS Lab participated in "We Innovate" Event where we shared our research activities with other industry partners, students, and researchers having variety of different engineering displines/backgrounds.

WE Innovate is the year's biggest showcase of Waterloo Engineering innovation. The UW's world class researchers will be displaying emerging research in engineering - cutting edge technology that will shape the world of tomorrow.

Dr. Liping Fu, Lalita Thakali, Johnny L. Cao and Jonathan T.J. Kwon from the iTSS lab attended the 2012 Aurora board meeting (hosted by the MTO), held at Holiday Inn Toronto Yorkdale from Oct. 9th to 11th, 2012.

Some of the participants of this event were Chris Albrecht from Iowa State University, Max Perchanok and Heather McClintock from Ontario Ministry of Transportation, Dawn Gustafson from Michigan DOT, Tina Greenfield from Iowa DOT, Curt Pape from Minnesota DOT, Thomas Lyden from Ohio DOT, Ron Hall from Kansas DOT, Abner Johnson from Ohio DOT, and Jack Stickel from Alaska DOT.

The event featured many sessions, and a part of them was project mini-meetings for giving updates and having interactive yet fruitful discussions on Aurora's projects. Group tours to MTO's COMPASS traffic centre and Pelmorex were truly entertaining and enjoyable.

Dr. Fu gave a 40-min presentation giving a quick overview on various different research projects/activities of the iTSS lab. Some of them include "Snow and Ice Control for Parking Lot and Sidewalk", "Snow and Ice Control for Transit Platforms", "Characteristics of Anti-icing Liquids under Highway Conditions", "Safety and Mobility Benefit of WRM" and many others.

Jonathan also gave a presentation on a new project (funded by the Aurora Program), entitled "Optimal RWIS Density and Location".

Dr. Liping Fu and Kamal Hossain participated at the Snow & Ice Conference and Expo hosted by Landscape Ontaio on Thursday, Sept 20th, 2012.

This event features a few morning sessions, in one of which Dr. Fu gave a talk on "Snow and Ice Control for Parking Lots and Sidewalks", followed by displays of exciting new products as well as popular snow removal equipments and technology.

Dr. Liping Fu will be giving a special seminar entilted "Winter Road Safety and Mobility" at Imperial College on Friday 14 September 2012. Details can be found at [Clcik here].

During his stay in France, he will also be participating in the Intenational Scientific Conference, "Energy Efficient Transportation Networks".

The 22nd Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference was held in Banff, Alberta. This conference brought together stakeholders in road and vehicle safety to facilitate exchange between disciplines and to promote strategies that would improve road safety.

Dr. Liping Fu gave a talk on "Collision Prediction Models for Quantifying the Safety Benefits of Winter Road Maintenance"
by L. Fu, L.F. Miranda-Moreno, and T. Usman.

The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering Annual Conference was held in Edmonton, Alberta.

There were three papers accepted for publication from the iTSS Lab and they are as follows;

1. [PDF] "Feasibility of Using Speed as a Winter Road Maintenance Performance Measure for Rural Highways"
     by L. Thakali, L.J. Cao, G. Donahar, and , L. Fu (presenter)

2. [PDF] "Effect of Inclement Weather Conditions on Macroscopic Traffic Behavior" by T.J. Kwon (presenter) , L. Fu , and K. Hossain

3. [PDF] "Quantifying the Mobility Effects of Winter Road Conditions" by G. Donaher, L. Fu (presenter), T. Usman

Dr. Liping Fu gave a short course on "Winter Road Maintenance - Performance Measurement and Evaluation" as a part of the professional development program offered through the 2012 CSCE Annual Conference.

This short course introduced the fundamentals of performance measurement for highway winter maintenance operations, including basic concepts, performance measurement framework, alternative performance measures, and data needs, and a new software tool that could be used to automate the performance measurement process.  It illustrated the introduced concepts, processes and methods through the use of case studies.

This short course consisted of a total of five sessions;

1. Introduction and Survey (by Dr. Liping Fu and Jonathan T.J. Kwon)
2. Performance Measurement: Concepts and Methods (by Dr. Liping Fu)
3. Data for PM (by Jonathan T.J. Kwon)
4. Models for PM (by Dr. Liping Fu)
5. Tool - iWinMan (by Dr. Liping Fu)

This symposium, jointly organized by University of Alberta, University of Waterloo, University of New Brunswick, and sponsored by Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) and China Highway and Transportation Society (CHTS), is organized as a companion event of the CSCE's 2012 Annual Conference.

This workshop hosted by Universtiy of Alberta will provide an opportunity to establish a foundation for furture collaboration between CSCE and CHTS as well as industries and professionals from both Canada and China.

In this symposium, Dr. Liping Fu from the iTSS Lab at the University of Waterloo chaired the morning sessions and gave a presentation entitled "Winter road safety and mobility".

The Maintenance Technology Project (MTP) is the Ministry's focus for identifying, evaluating, demonstrating, and implementing new technology in highway maintenance. To serve its purpose, MTO once again hosted the MTP open house on March 7 in Grey county, Ontario. Open House is an opportunity to showcase some of the state-of-the-art technology for managing and maintaining highways and secondary roads during the winter season. iTSS lab also participated in this event and presented two projects.

Congratulations to Taimur Usman, who successfully passed his Ph.D. oral defence on December 2 2011. Taimur has been a Ph.D. student since 2007 under supervisions of Dr. Liping L. Fu (supervisor), Professor at the University of Waterloo and Dr. Luis F. Miranda-Moreno (co-supervisor), Assistant Professor at McGill University.

The Oral Defence was chaired by Dr. Martin Cooke, Professor at the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies. The examining committee consisted of 4 examiners, who were Dr. Frank F. Saccomanno, Professor and Dr. Wei-Chau Xie, Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Dr. Jean Andrey, Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, and Dr. Mohamed A. Abdel-Aty at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Central Florida.

His doctoral thesis is entitled "Model for Quantifying Safety Benefits of Winter Road Maintenance" [Abstract].

Congratulations, Taimur!!!

Dr. Fu was once again recognized as the transportation industry's best player and received Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)’s 2011 Academic Merit Award during TAC's 2011 Annual Conference and Exhibition held in Edmonton (Sept. 11 to 14).

The award is supported by Transport Canada to recognize leadership, excellence and achievement in all modes and segments of the transport sector. An independent panel of judges representing the air, rail, marine and road modes made the selection in terms of the following criteria: Candidates must have made a long-term contribution to the advancement of the academic field and to the development of tomorrow's transportation leaders. Congratulations, Dr. Fu!!!

The followings list some of the published works led by iTSS Lab.

1. [2011] "On the Road to Performance-based Winter Maintenance", RoadTalk, Vol. 17(3), pp. 7-9. [PDF]

2. [2006] "Research Confirms Effectiveness For Snow Removal", RoadTalk, Vol. 12(1), pp. 3. [PDF]

Below lists the keynote speeches given by Dr. Fu during his visit to China.

1. " Winter Transportation Mobility and Safety: Opportunities and Challenges", at the First International Conference on Transportation Information and Safety, June 27-29, Wuhan, China. He was also the co-chair of this conference.

2. "Optimization under Uncertainty with Applications in ITS and transportation safety",  at the Third International Conference on Transportation Engineering, July 23-25, 2011, Chengdu, China.  

Dr. Fu is on a business trip and will be giving keynote speeches at a couple of transportation conferences in China: one in WuHan (http://www.ictis-online.org) and the other in Chengdu (http://ctt.swjtu.edu.cn/icte/index_cn.asp).

He will also be visiting and giving talks at several universities across China:

 - Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing
 - Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan
 - Southeast University, Nanjing
 - Tongji University, Shanghai
 - Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu

Students and research associates of iTSS lab participated in 2011Maintenance Technology Symposium hosted by the Ministry of Transportation Ontario's head office in St. Catherine.

The Symposium gave an opportunity to learn about recent changes and trends in Ontario’s highway maintenance standards and technology, to provide input on developing issues and to help set Ministry priorities for future improvements. 

Presentations given by the members of iTSS lab: Dr. Fu, Taimur U., Ramona M., Raqip O.M., and Johnny C.