TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE GROUP WINS BEST PAPER

The Best Paper Award at the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress (ITSWC) honors the most scholarly scientific papers submitted for review and presentation. This competitive award recognizes the paper that exemplifies innovation and excellence in the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS).

In a World Congress gathering that was begun with words by William Ford, Chairman of Ford Motor Company, the day's proceedings only got better for members of ODU's Transportation Research Institute (TRI). At the closing ceremony of the 18th World Congress, their paper titled "Queuing Delays Associated with Secondary Incidents," authored by Drs. Hongbing Zhang, Mecit Cetin and Asad Khattak, received the best scientific paper award, which recognizes the outstanding research conducted by TRI.

Funded by the Virginia Department of Transportation through the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research, the research within the paper shows that, in transportation, primary-secondary incident pairs can have substantially larger durations than single incidents, on average. Moreover, for secondary incidents, which end after their associated primary incidents, the total delays increase, as time gap between the primary and secondary incident increases. All these factors explain the relationship of delays experienced in relation to an incident and have significant implications for incident management.

The ITSWC is a premier international conference focused on ITS. It was held in Orlando, FL, October 16-20, 2011.