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.