Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

4855

Mohamed Osman

Date

2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Civil Engineering

Concentration

Transportation Engineering

Committee Chair

Sabyasachee Mishra

Committee Member

Mihalis Gkolias

Committee Member

Stephanie Ivey

Committee Member

Tao Ma

Abstract

Work zones are critical parts of the transportation infrastructure renewal process consisting of rehabilitation of roadways, maintenance, and utility work. Given the specific nature of a work zone (complex arrangements of traffic control devices and signs, narrow lanes, duration) a number of crashes occur with varying severities involving different vehicle sizes.This dissertation proposes a comprehensive discrete choice analysis of injury severity of crashes in work zones on both the crash and occupant levels, in roadway work zones through a comprehensive set of discrete choice econometric frameworks. Robust discrete choice modeling structures are introduced and applied in the field of work zone safety.This dissertation contains three (3) studies representing the empirical analysis conducted to address the following research questions:1.What factors may contribute to the injury severity levels of large-truck crashes in work zones? And what are the robust analytical methods to recognize such factors?2.How do specific work zone configurations affect factors contributing to the levels of injury severity of work zone crashes?3.How does the specific work zone-component-area where a crash has occurred affect factors contributing to the injury severity levels of work zone crashes?The first study investigates the causal factors contributing to injury severity of large truck crashes in work zones. The second study investigates the causal factors contributing to the injury severity of passenger-car occupants for crashes occurring in different work zone configurations (lane closure, lane shift/crossover, shoulder/median, intermittent, and other). The third study investigates the causal factors contributing to driver’s injury severity in the different work zone component-areas (advance-warning, transition, activity, and termination areas). The first study compares a comprehensive set of discrete choice modeling structures; Multinomial Logit (MNL) model, Nested Logit (NL) model, Ordered Logit (ORL) model and Generalized Ordered Response Logit (GORL) model. The second and third studies developed the Mixed Generalized Ordered Response Probit (MGORP) modeling framework to conduct the proposed analysis to answer the second and third research questions. The empirical analysis was conducted using work zone crash database in 10 years of the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS).

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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