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PORTAL News Items

 
ITS Lab Mourns the Loss of Bill Kloos • November 2009
It is with great sadness that ITS Lab faculty and students pass along the news of the death of William C. Kloos on November 4th. Bill was a long time supporter of the ITS Lab, the CEE Department (he served on our advisory board), and PSU students. Bill was an extremely innovative traffic engineer and more importantly a great person. We will miss his humor, insight and help and everything that he contributed to our profession and world. Our thoughts go out to his family during this difficult time. A Celebration of Life is planned for January 9 at 3 PM at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, 3228 SW Sunset Blvd., Portland, OR 97239 (SW Dosch & Sunset Blvd).
 
Prof. Monsere Presents Lab Work at the Innovations in Congestion Monitoring Workshop, Beijing China • October 2009
Prof. Monsere gave an invited presentation about the ITS Lab's recent activities at the Innovations in Congestion Monitoring Workshop in Beijing China October 28-29, 2009. The workshop was sponsored by the Beijing Transportation Research Center and co-sponsored by the Beijing Municipal Committee of Transportation, the Texas Transportation Institute, and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Performance Measures Committee. The workshop's objective was to share knowledge to help understand traffic congestion, which is a critical transportation issue in China. Increasing urbanization, economic development, and private auto ownership are combining to create large delays and a lack of reliability on most major urban highways and streets throughout the entire daytime hours. The conference was very enjoyable (Dr. Monsere is shown at right visiting Summer Palace with co-presenters) and a success.
 
ITS Lab Hosts TransPort Technical Advisory Committee Meeting • October 2009
On October 14, 2009 TransPort Technical Advisory Committee visited the ITS Lab to meet with Prof. Kristin Tufte, Prof. Chris Monsere, PORTAL team, and PSU students. James Whiteneck, Shreemoyee Sarkar, Poonam Singh and Sathish Periasamy had presentations on latest enhancements to PORTAL (Portal 2.0). PSU students Kristie Gladhill, Meead Saberi, Ryan Conrad, Nikki Wheeler, and April Cutter also made presentations about their research projects. We were pleased to welcome our guests to PSU and had an excellent discussion on various topics. Presentations are available: Saberi, Wheeler, Whiteneck, Sarkar, Periasamy, Singh .
 
Shelley Row, ITS Joint Program Office Director, Visits ITS Lab • August 2009
Dr. Kristin Tufte led a debriefing of the PSU ITS Lab on August 26 for Shelley Row, ITS Joint Program Office Director. Students Huan Li (Detection of Bottleneck Activation Historically and in Real-Time), Alex Bigazzi ("Greening" PORTAL), Heba Wakiel (Developing Corridor-Level Truck Travel Time Estimates and Other Freight Performance Measures from Archived ITS Data), and Ryan Conrad (Algorithms and Methodologies to Analyze and Quantify the Impacts of Congestion on Time-dependent Real-world Urban Networks) gave presentations on their OTREC-supported work. TransPort representatives Deena Platman (METRO), Dennis Mitchell (ODOT), and Jim Gelhar (City of Gresham) also provided an overview of their work. The debriefing was followed by a reception that was co-sponsored by WTS and OTREC.
 
Bertini Appointed Deputy Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration at the US Department of Transportation • August 2009
Professor Bertini has been appointed the deputy administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration at the US Department of Transportation. As the founding director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab and the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, Bertini's influence on transportation education and research at PSU is nearly unmeasurable. All of the current, past and future ITS Lab faculty and students thank Prof. Bertini for his unending effort and dedication to making so many things possible. We wish him all the best in his new position and look forward to working with him in the future! See the story in the Oregonian
 
PORTAL project releases a video depicting 1,000 days of bottlenecks on northbound I-5 in Portland • March 2009
The PORTAL project in the ITS Lab recently released a video depicting 1,000 days of bottlenecks on northbound I-5 in Portland. Using data collected from ODOT freeway sensors, the PORTAL team has developed a mechanism for identifying bottlenecks and characterizing their impact on freeway performance. For more information see PORTAL. Watch the video:
 
PORTAL used for Corridor Summary • March 2009
PORTAL data was used to prepare corridor operating condition summaries to be included in the regional Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) plan. These summaries are an example of the use of PORTAL data for planning and problem identification. We include links to two example summaries one for I-5 NB and one for I-5 SB. The summaries were created by Jen Bachman of DKS. Thanks to Jim Peters, also of DKS, for providing them to the ITS Lab team.
 
PORTAL TAC Kickoff Meeting • January 2009
The PORTAL Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) was convened for a kickoff meeting. This TAC will provide advice and guidance to the PORTAL team as they work towards making the PORTAL archive professional and sustainable. Presentations were made by Dr. Kristin Tufte and Spicer Matthews. Slides can be found at this link: http://www.its.pdx.edu/pdf/portal_tac_kickoff.pdf.
 
Rafael Fernandez presents paper at CIDR 2009 • January 2009
Rafael J. Fernandez-Moctezuma, Kristin Tufte, and Jin Li authored the paper "Inter-Operator Feedback in Data Stream Management Systems via Punctuation", accepted to the Fourth Biennial Conference on Innovative Database Research (CIDR 2009). The conference had a 27% accept rate. The paper documents a new inter-operator feedback mechanism in stream engines. The work is part of the latte project, which aims toward refinement and development of stream engines which support online processing of data streams, such as the traffic data from freeway loop detectors.
 
ITS Lab Students and Faculty Participate in 15th World Congress on ITS • November 2008
ITS Lab students and faculty were active participants in the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems, held in New York City, November 16-20, 2008. Lisa Diercksen, MS student, presented "A Second Look at the Effectiveness of the Myrtle Creek Dynamic Advanced Curve Warning System;" Jerzy Wieczorek, MS student, presented "Using Archived ITS Data to Automatically Identify Freeway Bottlenecks in Portland, Oregon;" Rafael J. Fernandez-Moctezuma, Ph.D. student, presented "Developing an Imputation Strategy for an Archived Data User Service in Portland, Oregon;" Galen McGill of the Oregon Department of Transportation presented "Accuracy in Real-Time Estimation of Travel Time," co-authored with Prof. Tufte. Prof. Robert Bertini also presented "Empirical Evaluation of Adaptive Ramp Metering Along Two Freeway Corridors in Portland, Oregon;" and "Toward Transport Payment Integration in Portland, Oregon." The World Congress is sponsored by ITS AMerica, ERTICO-ITS Europe and ITS Japan.
 
Monsere Presents PORTAL visulization techniques in FHWA Webinar • November 2008
Prof. Monsere presented about PORTAL's unique visualization capabilities during a Travel Model Improvement Program webinar on November 13, 2008 titled "Using Visualization Techniques to Communicate Transportation Planning Data". The webinar featured four interesting presentation and a virtual audience of nearly 120. A complete transcript including a PDF of the presentation can be found here
 
PORTAL October Report Produced • November 2008
The PORTAL October report has been produced. This report details a high-level investigation into the data quality of the ODOT loop detector data in the PORTAL data archive addressing issues such as validity of no traffic readings, technically invalid zero occupancy readings, high speed readings and low overnight speeds. Conclusions and recommendations are included. Report
 


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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0236567. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.