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This research project is the Initial Institution Initial Project for the University of Central Florida as proposed to the USDOT in the SAFER-SIM proposal. The project is envisioned to continue through the duration of the center to provide a sustained research effort.

An emerging and promising direction in safety research is the use of microscopic traffic data in safety application and analysis. There are many infrastructure-based sensing technologies, e.g., microwave radars and loop detectors. We propose to use this data and extend it to include other types of sensing technologies that are not only infrastructure-based but include vehicle-based tracking for more refined data, i.e. GPS. The project aims at collecting and integrating this data. Then using this traffic data, calibrate and validate traffic simulation models (e.g., VISSIM) to represent specific traffic conditions such as reduced visibility conditions. Actual behavior, such as gap distance and speed from field radars, can then be fed back to the microscopic model to calibrate and tune the model to more closely match real driving behavior. We intend to also investigate traffic parameters captured by vireo technology and develop a simulation tool based on this data to study dilemma zones decisions at signalized intersections.