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    <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
    <link>https://rip.trb.org/</link>
    <atom:link href="https://rip.trb.org/Record/RSS?s=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" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
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    <language>en-us</language>
    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
    <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
    <image>
      <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
      <url>https://rip.trb.org/Images/PageHeader-wTitle-RIP.jpg</url>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/</link>
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    <item>
      <title>Emergency Truck Parking Location Modeling</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2684216</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This research project will develop and apply optimization methods for the modeling of the emergency truck parking problem. This research is directly aligned with the Center for Freight Transportation for Efficient and Resilient Supply Chain (FERSC) goal of advancing research and practice for resilient and safe freight transportation. The results of this research can be used to inform policy and identify needed investments in truck parking facilities. The end goal is to inform the establishment of safe parking facilities to minimize risks for truck drivers and the public that are associated with commercial vehicles stopping at inadequate (sometimes illegal) locations due to the lack of appropriate short- and long-term parking in emergency situations.

A top concern for truck drivers is finding adequate parking. Truck drivers need a safe place to stop for compliance with hours-of-service (HOS) regulations and for other reasons related and unrelated to their jobs. Finding adequate truck parking is even more critical in emergency situations when regular truck parking facilities might not be accessible. This research project will apply optimization methods for the modeling of the emergency truck parking problem. A mathematical programming approach will be used to identify appropriate locations for emergency truck parking under different scenarios of disruptive emergency events. The mathematical model will be tested with an instance developed for Oregon. The results of this research have the potential to inform policy and identify needed investments in truck parking facilities.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:59:53 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2684216</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Streamlining Work Planning for County Maintenance Workforces
</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2427614</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) County Maintenance Staff face complex challenges in coordinating, scheduling, and documenting work conducted by crews. While work assignments ultimately must be formally documented, the steps taken to finalize that documentation vary greatly from garage to garage, are full of redundancies, and open to potential missteps. Methods currently utilized by County Garage personnel to track activities span from emails, post-it-notes, dry erase boards, calendars, spreadsheets, and notes on paper. County Garage Managers develop work plans on a daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly and annual basis. Activities from these plans are assigned as tasks to each crew based on specific days/weeks to accomplish projects in a timely manner. However, maintenance forces are often redirected from scheduled work to address roadway emergencies such as accidents, vehicle fires, roadway flooding, fallen trees, lost tractor-trailer loads, slips, calls from local law enforcement and/or emergency responders for maintenance of traffic or other assistance, calls from the public to report issues, and so forth. When these emergencies arise, the work originally scheduled to take place that day does not occur, and it must be rescheduled to another day. Given the ad-hoc tracking of assignments, it is difficult to ensure tasks are not lost, all work that needs to be rescheduled is addressed appropriately, and formalized documentation of the activities that took place occurs. 

The goal of this research is to streamline maintenance work planning processes for county garage staff.           ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2024 14:42:44 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2427614</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Real-time Deep Reinforcement Learning for Evacuation under Emergencies</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1937027</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Aviation emergencies pose high risks to humans, when it occurs, it is imperative to evacuate humans to safe places in an efficient manner. Under the high level of time pressure, decision-makers are facing great challenges of developing an optimal evacuation quickly, especially when the threats involved are not static and the environment is unfamiliar. The research team plans to integrate Asynchronous Advantage Actor Critic (A3C) algorithm with the velocity obstacle (VO) models to optimize evacuation in an airport environment under emergencies. A multi-agent collaborative evacuation modeling framework for a complex environment with moving threats will be developed to provide adaptive continuous decision-aid to each agent, in accordance to the changing environments.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 02 Apr 2022 11:21:10 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1937027</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Machine Learning for Improving Air Mobility under Emergency Situations</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1937026</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Emergency situations in aviation pose serious risks to life and result in huge negative impacts on air mobility, causing a significant economic and reputation loss to airlines and airports. However, the decisions to deal with emergencies are usually made by flight dispatchers according to their experience, and they merely consider local-view optimization. Therefore, there is an urgent need to design a decision-making assistant system to alleviate the negative impact of perturbations on aviation air mobility in the global-view perspective. In this project, the research team will develop a framework based on machine learning that captures the patterns of emergency situations and optimizes the operation schedules quickly and accurately for maximum air mobility efficiency at both micro-level and macro-level. The team will utilize multi-source data and leverage deep learning models to predict the consequence of emergency events considering the spatial-temporal characteristics of the events. Based on a prediction model, the team will optimize air mobility output by adopting a deep multi-agent reinforcement learning model. The goal is to provide pre-alert and decision-aid system for passengers and airport staff when emergency events occur, and to adjust the original schedule for quick recovery of disrupted air mobility.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 02 Apr 2022 11:16:23 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1937026</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Y4R3 - Determination of Position and Operation Analysis of Emergency Freight Parking in Florida State</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1874082</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Florida is extremely vulnerable to many natural disasters such as flooding and hurricanes. Due to its several
miles of coastline, significant drainage systems, and relatively low elevations, the entire state is especially
susceptible to flooding at any time of the year. Extreme disruptions to the transportation networks and
communications is one of the impacts of flooding and any kind of natural disaster or emergency situation.
Hence, the importance of an integrated, comprehensive approach to disaster loss reduction is not
neglectable. The transportation system in Florida needs to overcome many disruptions during the hurricane
season caused by the heavy rains, strong storms, and many other local events. In these critical situations,
the safe, fast, and reliable shipment of cargo is vital to ensure the continuation of the demands for society.
Above that, the safety of truck drivers at all conditions remains the first priority.Therefore, this research focuses to support the design and operation of the emergency truck parking network
(ETPN) for freight operations in the State of Florida. The research team will focus on the opportunities and
challenges associated with the design and operation of the ETPN in Florida, and also, will focus on
developing decision-making support for and managerial insight into the design and operation of such
networks. Specifically, the two specific objectives of this project are:
(1). Conduct a statewide study to (i) assess the supply and demand for emergency truck parking, (ii)
develop metrics to assess the safety and economic impact of emergency truck parking network, and
(iii) build a prototype web-based tool or mobile app to guide truck drivers to emergency parking
locations in Florida.
(2). Develop simulation models to (i) analyze the performance of alternative emergency parking
networks and (ii) generate insight into the impact of truck driver behavior on the expected
performance of alternative emergency parking networks.
Consequently, this research can reduce travel time and improve safety which the cost saving can be spent
on building new infrastructure. Furthermore, by directing trucks out of the network in a shorter time and
preventing the illegal parking the mobility of other vehicles will be improved and the risk of accidents will
be reduced. The results of this project will be served for protecting, managing, and organizing the freight
movement in various critical/emergency situation.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2021 11:26:34 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1874082</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Synthesis of Information Related to Airport Practices. Topic S04-26. Managing a Flight Diversion with an Emergency Response at Small, Non-Hub, or General Aviation Airports</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1668965</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Synthesis 121: Managing a Flight Diversion with an Emergency Response at Small, Non-Hub, or General Aviation Airports compiles practices that small, non-hub, and general aviation airports use when planning for and responding to flight diversions that involve an incident or an emergency.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2019 19:11:02 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1668965</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Quantifying Uncertainty and Distributed Adaptive Control for Unanticipated Traffic Patterns as a Result of Major Natural and Man-made Disruptions</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1485712</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The project aims to develop control tools (algorithms) for traffic management in congested urban networks in a way that (i) takes advantage of data made available to intersection controllers by the vehicles and (ii) adapts to dramatic changes in traffic conditions (namely, incidents and no-notice emergency management events). The first part of the research quantifies uncertainty in traffic conditions due to data and data processing limitations, the second part of the research utilizes this understanding of uncertainty to develop scalable and robust control techniques.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 17 Oct 2017 12:43:42 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1485712</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Synthesis of Information Related to Airport Practices. Topic S04-18. Uses of Social Media to Inform Emergency Responders During an Airport Emergency</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1377071</link>
      <description><![CDATA[No summary provided.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 09 Dec 2015 11:34:25 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1377071</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>A Guidebook for Emergency Contracting Procedures for Administration of a Regional Emergency</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1364290</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Large-scale and extreme events can cause long-term disruptions in the use of transportation infrastructure. Many state departments of transportation (DOTs) have established procedures on how to address an emergency project. Recent events in Colorado involving multiple emergency projects across several geographic areas have identified the need for DOTs to have a plan for prioritizing and managing several concurrent emergency projects across multiple routes. NCHRP Legal Research Digest 49: Emergency Contracting: Flexibilities in Contracting Procedures During an Emergency provides a legal analysis for emergency contracting utilizing federal funds. For many DOTs, however, emergency contracting procedures are centered on a single emergency. When multiple infrastructure assets are compromised, DOTs do not have consistent guidelines on how to bring an overall system back online. The domestic scan on Best Practices in Accelerated Construction Techniques [NCHRP Project 20-68A (07-02)] developed case studies on seven emergency projects. It summarized operational techniques and made suggestions at the project level. However, it did not provide suggestions for a programmatic approach to facilitate the emergency contracting process. NCHRP Synthesis 438: Expedited Procurement Procedures for Emergency Construction Services identified this issue as a gap in the body of knowledge and recommended that research be undertaken to provide the necessary guidance to DOTs. The synthesis also identified the need to coordinate DOT plans with those of other state, local, and federal agencies in advance of a series of emergencies. Lastly, it recommended that the research investigate alternative contracting methods like indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts as potential sources for on-call emergency design and construction services as is done in New York and Florida.

There was a need for research to address the following questions: (1) What are the effective practices for developing a contracting approach for the administration of concurrent regional emergency projects? (2) How do roles and responsibilities in the field shift depending on the lead agency? (3) How are multiple corridors prioritized related to materials, contractor, route availability, and fabricator prioritization?


The objective of this research was to develop a contracting strategies guidebook for concurrent regional emergencies. The primary audience is state DOTs administering multiple projects over a region involving multiple routes.
 
The agency's final deliverables including a final research report documenting the entire research effort and findings, and a guidebook with appendices are available to download at: 
https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/08-107/FinalReport.pdf ; 
https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/08-107/FinalGuidebook.pdf ; 
https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/08-107/ReportandGuidebookAppendicesA-G.pdf



]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2015 01:00:26 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1364290</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Emergency Repair of Damaged Bridge Columns Using Mechanical Splices</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1319701</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Past effort in seismic design of concrete bridges has been on detailing of bridges to prevent collapse.  Reinforced concrete bridge columns are designed to undergo cracking, spalling, and yielding of steel and provide significant rotational capacity at plastic hinges so that the integrity of the overall structure is maintained.  With proper design and construction this objective can be met.  However, the serviceability of the bridge after the earthquake is in question.  The level of damage to different columns of a bridge varies depending on the intensity of the ground shaking, type of earthquake, and the force/deformation demand on individual members.  Based on the inspection of the damaged columns engineers have to determine whether the bridge is sufficiently safe to be kept open to traffic.  They should also recommend repair methods for the columns.  Any delay in opening of the bridge to traffic can have severe consequences on the passage of emergency vehicles, detour lengths, and traffic congestion in the area.  Rapid and effective repair methods are needed to enable quick opening of the bridge to minimize impact on the community. The proposed project includes the repair of fractured bars in a series of interlocking spiral bridge column models that are to be tested to failure as part of a study funded by the National Science Foundation at Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&amp;T).  This proposal to the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) is for work that would be performed as a subcontract of UNR's proposal to Caltrans.  The proposed work by Missouri S&amp;T and UNR is an extension of a current project by UNR (Caltrans Contract No. 59A0543), which is aimed at developing guidelines for reliable and efficient reinforced concrete repair methods using fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs).  The objective of the current project is to develop rapid repair methods for reinforced concrete bridge columns damaged by earthquakes.  Because the repair was intended to be done expeditiously, there was a consensus among the Caltrans bridge maintenance staff, the Caltrans research management, and the UNR researchers that columns with fractured bars would not be included in the current project.  The current project has achieved its objective of successfully developing emergency repair techniques.  However, these techniques do no cover columns with fractured bars.  Thus the proposed project extends this work to the repair of fractured bars.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 09 Aug 2014 01:00:46 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1319701</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Contraflow Evacuation Planning for I-65 in Alabama</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1243463</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The goal of this project is to assist the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) in the planning of contraflow operations for hurricane evacuation along I-65. The idea is to reverse one direction of the roadway to accommodate the substantially increased travel flow moving from the impact area. One problem faced by ALDOT is scheduling the contraflow process. The timing for the deployment of equipment and personnel and the initiation and termination of counterflow impact the effectiveness, safety, and cost of the operation. The researchers will investigate methodologies and develop a modeling framework to determine the onset and duration of counterflow. They will also create a set of look-up tables and a prototype computer tool to assist ALDOT in planning counterflow evacuation. Different from previous studies, this research will feature: (1) a well-established and reliable meso-scopic traffic flow simulation, the cell transmission model; (2) robust and stochastic optimization techniques to determine the onset and duration of contraflow; (3) incident identification and characterization using artificial-intelligence techniques; (4) a sensitivity analysis to account for inaccurate estimation of evacuee's route-choice behaviors. The project team will work closely with ALDOT to ensure that the models, algorithms, and prototype computer tool are customized to their needs.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:01:10 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1243463</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Transportation Network Resiliency Framework Development</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1229312</link>
      <description><![CDATA[With the high number of disaster events occurring in places with high population it is important to develop protocols to provide decision making tools to first responders and users of transportation networks. This work will consider the network level, the regional level and the user level to examine the resiliency of the system and potential for system recovery, to ensure the basic needs of users are met.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:39:28 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1229312</guid>
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