Safe Mobility

Challenges

Although the roads and highway network in the UAE is built to the highest structural and comfort quality, it is still among the leading causes of fatalities. The World Health Organisation (2018) estimates that the UAE has one of the highest road fatality rate (18.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), behind only Saudi Arabia. Contrarily, drawing inspiration from Sweden s Vision Zero mandate, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi has drastically reduced its fatality rate to 4.98. However, to fully adopt the Vision Zero strategy, key challenges remain related to identification and prioritisation of safety initiatives, optimum targeting of safety investments, identification of high-risk areas correlated with severe crashes. The Safe Mobility research group aims to develop data-driven solutions by utilising the available national traffic data, the driving simulation facility at UAEU, traffic modelling and data analysis to prioritise safety investments, policy design and resource allocation that can make the roads safer by efficient safety action plans, design improvements, community engagement and public awareness strategies.

Recently with the appraisal of COVID-19 pandemic, it was also realised that a safe mobility system is that which can be designed in a way that reduces infectious diseases. As such the Safe Mobility research group has expanded its research focus to model the dynamics of COVID-19 spread and draw methods of containing it through mobility restriction decisions.

 Aim

The goal is to improve the system-wide safety performance of transportation systems that can develop action plans for safer and predictable mobility networks with fewer vehicle run-off crashes, safe speeds and, roadside designs, as well as least spread of infectious diseases. The group also aims to derive decision-making frameworks that can target high risk features with low-cost risk mitigation strategies.

Ongoing and Recent Research Projects

• "Mathematical Modelling of COVID-19 Spread Dynamics in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with the Department of Health " Abu Dhabi
• "Development of Agent-based Simulation Models for the Assessment of COVID-19 Infectiousness and Crowd Management at Hajj and Umra Seasons" in collaboration with the Umm-Al Qura University & Ministry of Education at Saudi Arabia
• "Analysis of Crash Data in Abu Dhabi with In-depth Investigation on Pedestrian and Tailgating Accidents" in collaboration with the Integrated Transportation Center" Government of Abu Dhabi
• "Embedded Real-Time Wide Area Vehicle Detection and Tracking System for Traffic Safety & Monitoring Using Deep Learning"