Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Transportation enables the movement of people and goods, links other infrastructures and provides the support needed to build and maintain them. Safe and equitable access to transportation infrastructure is key to a sustainable society. Yet, in Canada and beyond, underserved urban communities have disproportionate exposure to road safety threats. Moreover, mobility inequity can have devastating consequences for vulnerable road users due to limited preparedness during disruptive events. This program is driven by the need for innovative technologies to assist society in transitioning toward sustainable, resilient, and safe urban mobility. The applicant's multidisciplinary research facilitated the development of the first automated safety evaluation platform adopted by Canadian cities. His research was also shaped by road safety projects with vulnerable communities in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver, BC, and in school zones in Edmonton, AB. The research demonstrated the critical need to consider diverse population factors in designing effective traffic safety mitigations. This program will develop and validate novel computing models and tools to assess the safety of vulnerable road users and resilience of human-centric traffic in urban shared facilities. The approach is unique as it considers a digital representation of community-aware mobility management that interacts with real-world information to provide an adaptive strategy for road user mobility. The research involves three synergetic research objectives: 1) identify and evaluate critical performance issues in road operations and their implications in nearby facilities by developing formal models to monitor road user behaviour and interactions, 2) develop a situation awareness-based understanding of human navigation by automatically learning new rules of interactions through discovering distinct patterns in cluttered traffic environments, and 3) incorporate this knowledge to formulate generative models for vulnerable road user behaviour during emergency situations. The research will incorporate real-time data analysis and combine formal methods and neuro-symbolic learning techniques within a co-simulation framework. This program will provide a blueprint for innovative traffic management that will benefit transportation stakeholders across Canada. The planned studies are a foundational step toward the long-term goal of developing new models and algorithms to better understand and evaluate the impact of emerging technologies on transportation infrastructure management and operation. The multidisciplinary research components of the program will prioritize underrepresented groups. It will train five graduate students and a team of undergraduates in state-of-the-art computing and analytical techniques. The program will offer HQP valuable experience in addressing practical and urgent transportation issues, supporting Canada's leadership in sustainable transportation technologies.