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.