Day 41

Today I worked on finishing the ArcGIS project that Xiang requested. I had a great time doing this REU and learned a lot about transportation and aviation risk.

Day 40

At the beginning of the day today Laura showed me the system that she wants me to use to document photos from the Lac-Megantic train accident. I started to sort through all of the photos. There was some difficulty identifying parts of the cars given their decimated nature.

At the lunch meeting today, Chen-Yu presented his work on passenger rail collisions and derailments, which was pretty interesting. In my spare time today I read the accident report on US Airways Flight 1549, which miraculously landed in the Hudson River without any fatalities. Tomorrow I will continue to work on documenting the photos from the Lac-Megantic accident if I have time. At the beginning of the day I will be working on the ArcGIS project that Xiang assigned us. 

Day 39

Today I read some accident reports and articles about incidents. It's interesting to see how foreign countries handle their investigations compared to the United States. Tomorrow, Laura is giving me a project relating to the Lac-Megantic accident. In any spare time I have, I will continue to read accident reports.

Day 38

At the beginning of the day today, I focused on making changes to my PowerPoint that were suggested at the safety meeting yesterday. I added a table to my risk calculations slide to make my methodology more clear, and added more info breaking down types of commodities shipped for my cargo flight slides. I also filled out and submitted the student form evaluating my REU performance. I moved all of my modules, the REU paper, and my outline to the RailTEC server.

After this, I read about articles/stories about various aviation incidents and runway incursions. 

Day 37

At the beginning of the day today, I made minor touch ups to my presentation for the safety meeting. My presentation went very well. Hannah and Manu also did their presentations on waterways and rail, which was very interesting to see. In the next couple days, there are some minor changes that I have to make to clarify and improve my presentation. Over the next couple days, I'm also planning to continue reading about aviation incidents to learn more about aviation incidents and risk factors. 

Day 36

Today I worked on polishing my PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow. I presented to Manu, Jeff, and Hannah and they made some useful suggestions for changes that I could make. After I made the changes that they suggested, I read about some interesting incidents, mostly terrorist hijackings. There were also some interesting articles I found on improvements in security since the 1970's. I also worked on familiarizing myself with the presentation so that it goes smoothly tomorrow.

Day 35

Today I finished writing my REU research paper, and focused on editing it. I also created a PowerPoint based off of my modules to present at the safety meeting Thursday. It was a bit of a challenge to shorten the slides to an appropriate length and to delete enough slides to fit a 20 minute presentation, but I think I have a good amount of information in my presentation. At the lunch meeting today, I listened to Brent do a presentation on insulators.

Tomorrow I will continue to work on improving my PowerPoint presentation for Thursday, as well as looking for any improvements that I can make to my research paper. 

Day 34

Today I spent most of the day continuing to write my research paper for the REU. I focused particularly on the methodology and framework of the risk matrix. I talked extensively about why I chose to use a risk matrix to evaluate my risk factors, as well as acknowledging the drawbacks that came along with it. I make it clear that it was a fairly arduous process that required invaluable input from my colleagues and the graduate students. I also talk about case studies for the two risk factors that I identified as most severe, in order to demonstrate how I used them to establish "key takeaways" for each of the risk factors. Tomorrow I will continue to work in finishing my research paper, as well as compiling a PowerPoint for my presentation on Thursday. 

Here is the link to my current version of the research paper: Research Paper

Day 33

At the beginning of the day today, I presented my Powerpoint to Jeff and Hannah, where they made helpful suggestions as to some improvements that I can make. After implementing these changes, I continued writing my paper for the REU. I'm organizing my paper in a semi-chronological order. So far, a lot of my paper emphasizes the research process that I undertook from the beginning of my work here to the Powerpoint modules. 

Next week, I will continue writing my REU paper. I plan to write a few paragraphs on the specific, more technical aspects of my research, as well as an evaluation of the effectiveness of the research process I undertook. 

Here is the last version of my Powerpoint. Please download it instead of trying to view it in your browser: Powerpoint

Excerpt of the draft of my REU paper

Day 32

At the beginning of the day I attended the safety meeting where Jeff presented his research on pipeline risk. After that, I continued my discussion with Francesco about the appropriate way to use a risk matrix and I began to write my paper for the REU. Francesco gave me some helpful suggestions on changes I can make to the risk matrix framework in accordance with Rapik's recommendations. I worked on cleaning up the citations in my presentation too. 

Tomorrow I will continue working on the REU paper, as well as making minor edits to the PowerPoint (i.e. continuing to clean up the citations)

Here is the current link to my PowerPoint. Please download it instead of trying to view it in your browser: Powerpoint

Day 31

Today I spent the day finishing up the "Case Studies" module on my Powerpoint, specifically the "hazardous materials" and "maintenance error" case studies. I continued reading accident reports from the NTSB and articles to find good representative cases for each of my risk factors. I settled on ValuJet flight 592 for "hazardous materials" and Aeroperú Flight 603 for "maintenance errors." 
Especially for the "maintenance errors" module it was very interesting to read about the different representative incidents. This one was particularly striking to me because something seemingly so minor can doom a flight. Right before the incident flight, the aircraft was being repaired and the maintenance workers appropriately put tape over the static ports while polishing the plane. When they finished working on the plane, they neglected to remove the tape and that completely compromised the accuracy of the plane's instruments, eventually leading it to crash in the Pacific  Ocean. If the maintenance workers had spent 30 seconds removing the tape, this incident never would have happened. 

Tomorrow I will finish up any last minute changes that I have to make on the Powerpoint and I will begin writing my paper.

Here's the link to my recent version of the Powerpoint. Please download it instead of trying to view it in your browser: Powerpoint

Day 30

Today I spent most of the day continuing to write my Powerpoint, focusing on the "Case Studies" module and adapting my risk matrix slides to fit the suggestions that Francesco made.  I also implemented all of the edits that I had picked up yesterday from my presentation to Jesus, Jeff, and Manu. 

I sat in on the lunch meeting where Matt presented on RailTEC's research on railpads at Pueblo. It was interesting seeing the technology that was used to collect data. 

Tomorrow, I will continue working on the "Case Studies" module. I hope to begin writing my paper within the next couple of days. 

Here is the updated version of my Powerpoint. Please download it instead of trying to view it in your browser. Powerpoint 

Day 29

Today I spent the whole day writing my Powerpoint. I spent the afternoon reviewing my Powerpoint with Jeff and Manu and discussing the framework of my risk matrix with Francesco. We had a very interesting discussion on the framework for how a risk matrix is designed and how the likelihood and consequence levels are defined. We especially had a disagreement on whether "outdated technology" is a constant factor or not. We eventually came to an agreement after clarification on how the likelihood category is defined.

Tomorrow I will continue to work on changing my risk matrix framework based on my discussions with Francesco, and I will also continue my "Case Studies" Powerpoint module. 

Here is the link to my current version of the Powerpoint. Please download it after clicking the link, instead of trying to open it in the browser: Powerpoint

Day 28

For the first part of the day today, I read parts of the NTSB reports on accidents that had identified fatigue as a factor. This gave me a good background on what it was about fatigue that contributed to the accidents. Additionally, I had a better understanding of what the NTSB suggested to help mitigate the risk from fatigue.

After consulting with Manu, I have decided to add a few slides in my risk matrix framework to explain the percentages that I assigned to the risk factors. My hope is that this will help communicate my thought process and give more credence to the percentages that I chose. 

Next week I will continue to work on my risk mitigation module, and work on revising my risk matrix framework (as described above). I also plan to begin writing my paper next week.

Here is the link to my current version of the Powerpoint (the file is too large to appear in your browser, please download it after clicking the link): Powerpoint

Day 27

At the beginning of the day today I went to the safety meeting where Laura presented her work on the conditional probability of release of tank cars. It was interesting seeing the methods that she used for her calculations.

For the rest of the day, I worked on the "Risk Mitigation" module, especially focusing on methods of mitigating security risk. I went back and looked at some of the articles on the economic effects of terrorist attacks and anti-MANPADS technology. Other than some minor changes possibly, I'm pretty close to being finished with the "Risk Mitigation" module. Tomorrow I will begin doing the case studies for each of the different risk factors.

Here is what I have for my Powerpoint so far. All of the modules are on one presentation: Powerpoint   
PLEASE NOTE: The file is too big for Google Docs to generate a preview in your web browser, you will need to download it off of the link.

Day 26

Today I spent the first part of the day going back and looking at the literature that I noted the first time I read it. This helped me pick out the main details that I want on my Powerpoint slide. After doing this, I continued writing my Powerpoint module on risk mitigation strategies, with an emphasis on runway incursions.

Tomorrow I plan to finish my module on risk mitigation, and possibly begin the case studies module. I will continue to go back and look at the literature when I find it necessary. Overall I would say that my project is coming along on schedule, so I don't have any major concerns about getting it finished on time. If I have time, I would like to do a case study on each of the risk factors that I identified in my first module.

Day 25

Today I spent most of the day working on my Powerpoint. I focused on finishing my "Investigation of Risk Factors" module and beginning my "Risk Mitigation" module. I wrote a few of my slides on the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), continuing to read articles in the process to learn more about the ASRS and runway incursion prevention systems.

Brandon presented in the lunch meeting about RailTEC's research in Colorado on rail pads, which was pretty interesting. After the lunch meeting I continued working on the Powerpoint. Tomorrow I will continue working on my "Risk Mitigation" module and possibly begin my case studies.     

Day 24

Today I spent the whole day working on my Powerpoint. Xiang reviewed my Powerpoint over the weekend and suggested some changes that I make, which I did. The largest change that I made was introducing my risk matrix methodology and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of it instead of simply jumping right into it without any explanation.

Our risk group spent a couple of hours presenting our modules to each other and making suggestions on how we can improve our presentations. I took the suggested changes into account. I appreciated the discussion that I had with my group members over the risk methodology framework that I employed, specifically with regards to how I ranked the risk factors. 

Tomorrow I will continue to work on my Powerpoint, beginning my modules on risk mitigation and the case studies if I have time. I will also continue reading literature where I find it necessary to fill in any gaps in my knowledge and research. Within the next couple of days I hope to have my risk mitigation module finished. 

Day 23

Today I spent the majority of the day working on my Powerpoint. I continued the slides on the risk factors, as well as the risk matrix slides. As a reference, I looked at the "Guidelines for Chemical Transportation, Security, and Risk Management" to learn more about risk matrices. After consulting with this reference, I changed the consequence and likelihood scales to more closely match my risk factors. As a whole, my risk factors occur far more frequently than those involved in the reference source and your Udemy course, so I had to "tilt" the scale more towards categories with a higher likelihood.

I also read a few articles that helped me learn more about why maintenance errors occur and how often they occur. This helped greatly with that particular slide on my Powerpoint.

I plan to continue working on my Powerpoint, as well reading more literature where I find it necessary to fill in any knowledge gaps.

 

Day 22

Today I spent most of the day working on my Powerpoint. I continued to read the article on the TSA's attempts to reach 100% screening of cargo in the post 9/11 era. It was interesting to learn about the challenges that the TSA faces with trying to ensure the safety of cargo while at the same time making sure that they don't slow down the industry and cause disastrous economic effects. 

I faced some challenges in the phrasing of my risk factors with regards to trying to make a risk matrix. Ranking the likelihood and consequence for the risk factors you see in the picture below required a significant amount of educated guessing. I looked back at the Udemy course to get a handle on the scale that you used to rank the likelihood of the consequence. I'm going to alter the criteria to make them fit my risk factors better, as I need a scale that has some numbers between unlikely (3) and likely (4). This will be useful for factors like fatigue and outdated technology which are a constant presence. I feel it is appropriate to change the criteria as long as I justify my new choices. 

Tomorrow I will continue to work on the Powerpoint and read literature to fill in my knowledge gaps.

Day 21

Today I spent the majority of the day beginning to write my Powerpoint. It was a challenge to balance the expectations of the layout of the presentation with the topics that I wanted to address along with incorporating all of the research that I've done. I have to be able to simplify all of the research into easily readable and comprehendible slides, while at the same time making sure that my slides have substance to them.

Occasionally throughout the day, I would open up the articles that I've been reading in the past couple of weeks to jog my memory on the key points and "deliverables" of the articles. Tomorrow I will continue to work on my presentation and continue the practice of having articles open as I write the Powerpoint.

I'm doing some experimenting with the order of my slides to determine what is the most user friendly arrangement. I'll play this by ear and make a decision closer to when I have to finalize my presentation.

Day 20

Today I spent the whole day continuing/wrapping up my literature review before I begin my Powerpoint. I focused on human factors such as distractions in the cockpit, crew training, leading causes of accidents (both commercial and general aviation), and one particularly interesting article that focused on mitigating errors that occur while taxiing. 

Now that I feel I have a solid background of the risk factors involved with flight, I'm going to continue editing the outline that I made that will aid me in writing my Powerpoint. Once I feel that my outline properly conveys my intentions, I will begin writing the Powerpoint. 

Day 19

At the beginning of the day today, I attended the safety meeting where Jesus presented his research. It's interesting to me how precise you have to be with regards to the assumptions that you make when considering a release. Professor Barkan brought up issues such as wind direction and terrain that affect release severity, both things which I had never thought about taking into account, but definitely two pertinent factors.

For the rest of the day, I continued my literature review, focusing on human factors such as pilot age and simple human error. At the end of the day, I read an interesting article (Safety Practices, Training Practices and CRM: A Midpoint Perspective) that introduced the concept of crew resource management (CRM) to me. The author of the article, Daniel Maurino, made several interesting points about the flaws in how we evaluate aviation accidents. He made the analogy that accident investigation is the "postmortem of the system conducted after the point of no return....there is not much that can be done about it, other than organizing a funeral." It's similar to the thought that I have in the back of my head reading these accident reports, "Yes we will be able to identify the causes of this accident, but how much good are we really doing to prevent similar accidents in the future? Do the suggestions that the NTSB make actually help improve safety?

I appreciate his acknowledgement that human error is unavoidable, and he goes on to detail how the accident investigation process is flawed, because it doesn't investigate the "systemic and organizational" issues that lead to these errors. This article will prove extremely useful for my risk mitigation module, as it really opened my eyes to the issues of accident investigations. Most importantly, he makes sincere attempts and suggestions of ways that the training and monitoring ("surveillance" as he calls it) process can be improved to make the aviation world a safer place. 

Tomorrow I will continue my literature review and possibly get started on the Powerpoint. 

Day 18

Today I spent most of the day continuing to read articles, focusing on the human risk factors for aviation accidents such as pilot error, proper training methods from flight instructors, advanced flight control systems vs. conventional systems, and autopilot. 

In the middle of the day, we had a meeting with Xiang where he checked up on the progress of everyone in our group and made suggestions on how to execute our final project. He made particularly helpful suggestions to me with regards to the risk analysis framework, as I can't easily do a qualitative analysis. His discussions with us about risk were particularly interesting because it became very apparent that risk is defined however you want to it to be. It's not something that's a stringent definition, it changes depending on the situation that you're investigating; that's a very interesting concept to me.

Tomorrow I will continue to read articles on these human factors and possibly get started on the Powerpoint presentation.

Day 17

Today I spent a large part of the day continuing to read articles about aircraft safety measures, such as defense mechanisms against MANPADS, autopilot, bad weather mitigation systems (primarily ice), and  other articles discussing the role of human error in accidents.

For the rest of the day, I attended the lunch meeting where Kwan made a presentation on his role in the Thai railway system. The risk group had a short meeting with Kwan where he asked us some questions about our railroad risk calculation project. 

Tomorrow I will continue to read articles on the role of human error in aircraft accidents, and possibly began working on the Powerpoint.

Day 16

Today I spent the first half of the day continuing to read articles about mitigating terrorist threats, as well as an article about preventing runway incursions. Other articles that I read focused on securing cargo, and defending aircraft from missiles. After this, I browsed over the Udemy course again to get an idea of the type of PowerPoint that I am supposed to create. 

With this in mind, I created an outline covering the material that I felt was appropriate for my PowerPoint.  I am in a somewhat unique position given the nature of airplane accidents. I have identified the typical risk factors that affect daily flight. The outline is certainly subject to change. 

Here is the link to the outline, I would appreciate your comments: PowerPoint Outline

Tomorrow I will continue working on my outline and reading articles on efforts to protect aircraft the Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) such as the Northrop Grumman Guardian. 

Day 15

For the beginning of a day I attended the lectures where Chen-Yu, Xiang, and Laura presented on their topics of transportation risk. 

For the rest of the day, I continued to read articles for my aviation project, in the process compiling a document that summarizes all of the articles that I've read. The articles that I read today focused on bird strikes, methods to identify terrorists, and the effectiveness of post 9/11 security measures instituted by the government. 

On Monday I will begin outlining the risk factors and slides for my Powerpoint presentation. The document that summarizes all of the articles that I've read will be particularly helpful in building my outline.

Day 14

Today I spent most of the day reading articles for my aviation project. I focused on articles about mitigating the risks from terrorism, as well as articles that discussed the economic conditions of the post 9/11 flying world. These articles discussed the security efforts administered by the TSA and federal government to create safe flying conditions. I also found some interesting articles about other security measures to prevent terrorism, such as profiling. I attended a short lecture from Deb about the work that his research team has done investigating an Amtrak section of the Northeast Corridor.

Tomorrow, I plan to continue reading articles for my aviation project, as well as attending several of the lectures on the safety meeting organized by Francesco.

Day 13

For the first part of the day, I continued to read articles for my aviation risk project. My focus today was in flight cabin safety, terrorist threats, and runway incursions/safety. I read some very interesting articles on the MANPADS air defense system, the economic costs of terrorist attacks, and runway arrestor systems for planes that overrun their target. Another interesting article discussed the effects of noise cancelling headphones on passenger safety.

For the rest of the day today, I am going to attend the seminars from Professor Tutumeler's research group. Tomorrow I will continue to read articles for my aviation project and possibly begin outlining my Powerpoint presentation. 

Day 12

For most of the day today I listened to presentations by Francesco and Gilles Saussine on balast flight. In the spare time Manu and I made the necessary changes to the ArcGIS presentation before we present it to the company. I looked up articles for my aviation project as well, specifically on runway incursion avoidance systems.

Tomorrow I plan to attend more of the presentations from SNCF and continue reading articles for my aviation project. 

Day 11

Today I continued reading articles about different sources of aviation accidents such as ice accumulation, runway incursions, bird strikes, and pilot/ air traffic control fatigue. This continues to give me a greater background on the different types of hazards that exist within the world of aviation.

In between reading the articles, I've been attending some of the lectures from the SNCF visit. Riley gave an introduction to the research that he does on concrete cross ties as well as the sleeper and fastening system.  Later I will attend more of the lectures from the graduate students, as well as meeting with Rapik and Jesus to discuss the final results of our ArcGIS project.

Day 10

Today I delved into researching different topics of interest for my aviation project. I began with some simple searches with the words "aviation" and "risk" in them, and started reading some articles. After a few common themes became apparent to me, I further refined my search to glean some information on these themes. A couple areas of interest include: 

1. The effects of fatigue on pilots
2. The effects of fatigue on air traffic control
3. Outdated technology and poor infrastructure (runways, traffic management systems, etc.) that pilots and air traffic control rely on
4. The mitigation of risks from terrorist attacks on flights

Throughout next week, I will continue to read articles in these topics, as well as search for new interest topics.

Day 9

For the first part of the day, we worked on putting the finishing touches on our ArcGIS presentation. In our meeting today, Chen-Yu, Xiang, and Laura looked over our presentation and made some suggestions on how to improve it before we ultimately present it to the company. They also talked to us about the project that we will be doing in the coming weeks. This involved them explaining the process of literature review as a research practice. 
After the meeting, we worked on fixing the presentation, which consisted of updating the maps, font sizes, spacing, etc. I continued to look over the ASRS reports to glean some information from them, as well as doing searches through the U of I library to find journal articles about aviation risk. In the short time that I've spent searching through the library, I can already tell that this is going to be a far more valuable resource to learn more about my research interests than Google has been. Tomorrow I plan to continue reading the articles that I found today, as well as finding new pertinent ones.

Day 8

Today I worked on finishing the ArcGIS project with Manu.We worked on creating a Powerpoint presentatons summarizing all of the information and creating the appropriate maps in ArcGIS. We ran into a little bit of difficulty fitting all 11 routes onto one slide, but by resizing some things and shifting others around, we were able to make everything fit. We have been working in tandem with Hannah and Jeff to sync our Powerpoint presentations.
In the spare time that I had today, I continued to do research on risk mitigation in aviation. Rather than focusing on specific accidents, I've started to look more for general techniques that mitigate the risk. I found out about a program called Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which is an anonymous system which allows pilots to confidentially report close calls in an effort to increase safety in the future. This is precisely the type of system that would allow you to introduce reforms that would help mitigate risk in the future. I will continue to read about the ASRS and do more research on this.

Tomorrow, I will continue my research on the ASRS and our group will put the finishing touches on our presentation. 

Day 7

For the first half of the day, I continued researching and reading about different cases of aviation accidents involving hazardous materials. The most rigorous and complete sources in many cases were the NTSB (or equivalent organizations in the incident countries) reports. Transportation risk as it relates to hazardous materials is a pretty undiscovered field. There are several complications that I've come upon in my research. The post-accident investigations inevitably involve much speculation and educated guessing. Due to the nature of these accidents, recovery of data, equipment, etc. is usually impossible or significantly hindered. Thus it is difficult to glean useful information from the investigations. Also, "near-misses" aren't really reported due to concerns about prosecution and punishment. As a result, I'm only reading about worse-case scenarios. This makes it more difficult to learn about effective methods of risk mitigation. Nevertheless, I will move forward with my research in this field, as I have a great deal of interest in aviation.

For the second half of the day after Francesco's lunch meeting, Xiang and Jesus gave us a template and demonstrated how to prepare the final presentations for our ArcGIS project. Manu and I collaborated in splitting up the work. We got a fair amount of it done in the time we have and plan to finish up tomorrow or Thursday. 

Day 6

Today I worked on the next part of the ArcGIS project. In Excel I analyzed the data from the different routes according to the categories that Xiang and Jesus gave us. For each route, we broke down the risk based on type of tank car (Isotainer or Tank-car 1) and based on different ranges of risk levels. All of these calculations allow the data to be more easily interpreted and presentable to a company. It's very satisfying to see the ultimate result of all of the work that we've done. Not surprisingly, for all 6 routes and both types of tank cars,  approximately 75% of the risk fell between 1.0E-04 and 1.0E-06, the middle two levels of risk. This is to be expected; it basically is saying that for most of the route there is not a great deal of risk, but there is a non-negligible amount of risk involved.

After I compared and checked my Excel sheets with Manu, I continued to read more about the ValuJet accident, reading the NTSB accident report on it. After searching through many articles, it's apparent to me that this is the most high profile hazmat accident in aviation history thus far. One recent accident occurred in 2010, when UPS flight #6 crashed. There were a large number of lithium-ion batteries on board the plane, and there were other instances I've read about of lithium batteries catching on fire. This is potentially an area that I can look to further when I do my own project. 

Day 5

This morning I listened to Xiang's P.h.D. defense. It was my first time ever attending a P.h.D. defense, so it was very interesting to see how the process worked. Xiang gave about a 2.5 hour presentation, intertwined with frequent questions from the committee. It looked very exhausting to do, but he definitely knew his subject well and had done his research.
After this I finished checking the ArcGIS project with Manu. All of our data was very close to each other, and we believe that the minisucle error arose from very minor changes that we made to the automatically created routes to make the route pass closer to the cities given to us in the Excel documents. Later, Xiang taught us the steps for our risk calculation as the next step in our ArcGIS project. These calculations will give us an effective method of interpreting all of the data that we've collected from ArcGIS this week. He taught us some more about what exactly risk means and the different terms involved in the calculation process. Next week, I'll complete these risk calculations. For the rest of today, I'm going to read about the ValuJet flight 592 accident.

Day 4

Today Manu and I worked on the closing steps of our ArcGIS project. We exported the data files into Excel and ran them through Matlab. By using Matlab, our data was neatly organized by it's ID numbers and was nicely laid out in Excel. I began the process of comparing my results with Manu, which I will continue tomorrow.
I attended an interesting meeting today where Chen-Yu presented his research on the causes of passenger train derailments and freight train derailments. He created frequency and severity diagrams with his data and drew some conclusions about the similarities and differences in the frequency and severity of these two types of rail transport. It was particularly interesting how he incorporated the very recent findings from the passenger train derailment in Bridgeport, CT. I also learned a lot about the different classifications of derailments and collisions.

Tomorrow, I hope to attend Xiang's PhD defense, and I will finish the ArcGIS project up by comparing my results with Manu. If time permits, I will continue doing research to find a topic that interests me for my aviation risk project. I have already found several interesting articles on the ValuJet crash in the Everglades that was caused by expired chemical oxygen generators of the cargo hold of the plane. 

Day 3

Today I worked on our ArcGIS project the whole time. Manu and I worked on finishing the 6 routes that we were assigned. After I did the process a few more times I became very comfortable with it and it was just a matter of being systematic. Jesus gave us a 45 minute tutorial on the next step of our ArcGIS project, which focused on exporting our data to Excel for presentation to the company

Tomorrow Manu and I will continue working on the ArcGIS project and begin the process of exporting our data to Excel. We are discovering very small differences in our mean for the number of people affected, so we're going to look into the problem and try and discover the source of the error.

Day 2

At the beginning of the day I browsed through the tutorial book for ArcGIS to learn more about this software. I continued to try and install the program on my computer but ran into difficulty. Francesco and I decided that to simply switch to another computer in the office that had ArcGIS already installed on it. Jesus gave us a further tutorial in using ArcGIS, and we got our first assignment; calculating the expected population impact along 6 different train routes.

We had a lunch meeting where Xiang gave a very interesting presentation showing us different statistics on the dangers of broken rails. After the meeting, Manu and I worked on our ArcGIS assignment until the end of the day. I'm much more familiar with this program than I was at the start of the day, and I feel more comfortable using the program. For the rest of the week, we will work on finishing this assignment and I hope to become even more familiar with using ArcGIS.  
 

Day 1

Today was the kickoff meeting for our projects. We learned about the expectations of what the "risk" group would accomplish this summer and a couple of the grad students showed us a case study involving transportation risk, specifically by way of rail. It was interesting learning about the many uses of ArcGIS in solving these transportation issues. I quickly began to realize the real world applications that this field of study can be applied to.

After the meeting we had a tutorial where a couple of the grad students showed us some of the basic features of ArcGIS, introducing the concept of layers, .shp files, and how to sort data by different attributes. I'm currently in the process of trying to install Windows and ArcGIS on my Mac, which has run into some complications. In the meantime, I've scanned through a couple different reference sources and the TRB website to learn more about this field of transportation risk. From the reference sources, it is pretty clear to me that the issue of transportation risk in aviation is relatively unexplored. I look forward to learning more about this topic in the next two months.