Workshop: Surrogate Safety Measures

Workshop on surrogate safety measures in traffic research

Research questions

  • What are the most recent developments in the field of surrogate safety measures? What knowledge gaps should be addressed?
  • Which technical tools are currently used to collect data in surrogate safety studies?
  • What are the main challenges and directions for future research on surrogate safety methods?

State-of-the-art and technical tools for surrogate safety studies

The first part of this session will present the current state-of-the-art in the field of surrogate safety measures. Theoretical grounds for the use of safety surrogates, available indicators and techniques for severity ranking and initiatives for their validation (past and on-going) will be introduced.

The second part will focus on the technical tools for conducting surrogate safety studies. This includes both the problem of detection of safety-critical events and objective measurement of their severity. Several research teams will present their recent achievements. As an option, the speakers are “challenged” to apply their tools on a video sample with known “ground truth” so that the tools’ performances could be objectively measured and compared.

Interactive session

Participants will have the opportunity to test themselves some of the video analysis tools presented at the workshop.

Lessons learned

Workshop presenters, who have been extensively using surrogate safety measures in road safety research, will share their experiences, insights and visions of the future in this field.

What’s in it for me?

The participants will learn about state-of-the-art and the current research initiatives in the field of surrogate safety studies. They will get acquainted with pros and cons of the method and its feasibility in practical terms.

Organiser

Prof.dr. Tom Brijs is a Professor at the University of Hasselt and member of the RSS2017 Local Organising Committee.
Dr. Aliaksei Laureshyn (born 1977) is a senior researcher/lecturer at Lund University (Sweden) and Institute of Transport Economic (Norway). He has a Master Degree from Linköping University (Traffic Safety & Environment) and Doctoral Degree from Lund University (Traffic & Road Technology). Aliaksei’s main interest of research are observational studies in traffic, particularly with vulnerable road users, and technical tools that can aid in that. Currently, he co-ordinates the Horizon 2020 project InDeV (In-Depth understanding of accident causation for Vulnerable road users). Besides research, Aliaksei teaches in several courses on traffic safety and supervises Master and PhD students.

Speakers

Dr. Tarek Sayed is a Distinguished Professor at the University of British Columbia. He is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. He is the Director of the Bureau of Intelligent Transportation Systems at UBC. In 2014, he received the one time Centennial Road Safety Award from the Transportation Association of Canada in recognition for outstanding transformational and long-term contributions to road safety in Canada over the past 100 years.
Dr. Andrew P. Tarko is Professor of Civil Engineering, Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University, Director of Center for Road Safety at Purdue University, and International Director of Laboratory on Transportation Safety at Tongji University, China. His research expertise includes traffic operations and safety, safety management, and safety measurement fundamentals. He organized and chaired the 3rd International Conference on Road Safety and Simulation in 2011.
Matin Nabavi Niaki is a PhD candidate, working under the supervision of Dr. Nicolas Saunier at École Polytechnique de Montréal and Dr. Luis Miranda-Moreno at McGill University. She obtained her bachelor degree from the University of Toronto in 2012. Her research interests include transportation safety, cyclist’s safety and behaviour by applying computer vision techniques on video data.

The workshop is initiated by Horizon 2020 project InDeV (In-depth understanding of accident causation for vulnerable road users, grant 635895) – www.indev-project.eu.