Transportation and Infrastructure Systems Engineering
As a branch of civil engineering, transportation engineering has a history that is long and illustrious and a future that is full of promise. The National Academy of Engineering has identified restoring urban infrastructure and implementing smart mobility as grand challenges. We need coordinated approaches to tackle transportation issues by integrating car, rail, bus, truck, walking and bicycling to meet sustainability goals. Currently, we see how smartphones have enabled ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, while taxis and GPS-equipped cars and trucks are providing massive amounts of data that was unimaginable a few years back. Before long, it may be common to have vehicles are talking to infrastructure (V2I) and vehicles talking to each other (V2V). Traffic flow with automated vehicles is expected to be much safer and more efficient than with human drivers.
The journey to that future will be fascinating and challenging. The safe and efficient movement of people and goods relies on infrastructure. Highways, airports, railroads, waterways and pipelines need to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained. Purdue's Transportation and Infrastructure Systems Engineering faculty offer a wide range of classes, research facilities, and experiences. Their efforts will have noticeable impacts on challenges such as:
- Asset management
- Data acquisition and analytics
- Emergency response
- Energy
- Freight Transportation and Logistics
- Environment
- Smart Mobility
- Sustainability
- Urban infrastructure
The award-winning Purdue Student Chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers introduces students to the transportation profession and fosters a close association of students with practicing engineers, educators from other institutions, and local and national chapters of ITE.
Spotlights
August 3, 2006
Zachary T. Clark, undergraduate student, Avery Rhodes, MSCE 2005, Professor Darcy M. Bullock of Transportation,
James Sturdevant, Traffic Management and System Operations Specialist with
USDOT, and Dave Candey, Technical Support Manager at Econolite Control Products, received the Transportation Research Board D. Grant Mickle Award
for best paper in the area of operations and maintenance, titled "Evaluation of Stop Bar Video Detection Accuracy
at Signalized Intersections".
August 3, 2006
Traffic safety can be greatly impacted by non-truck drivers' and freight truck drivers' behavior toward one another. Professor Srinivas Peeta, graduate student Pengcheng Zhang, and former graduate student Weimin Zhou is the research team of this study titled "Behavior-based analysis of freeway car-truck interactions and related mitigation strategies".
