PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Rice engineers develop AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads

Rice engineers develop AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads
2024-08-28
(Press-News.org) Roadway-related incidents are a leading cause of flood fatalities nationwide, but limited flood-reporting tools make it difficult to evaluate road conditions in real time.

Existing tools — traffic cameras, water-level sensors and even social media data — can provide observations of flooding, but they are often not primarily designed for sensing flood conditions on roads and do not work in conjunction. A network of sensors could improve situational flood level awareness; however, they are expensive to operate at scale.

Engineers at Rice University have developed a possible solution to this problem: an automated data fusion framework called OpenSafe Fusion. Short for Open Source Situational Awareness Framework for Mobility using Data Fusion, OpenSafe Fusion leverages existing individual reporting mechanisms and public data sources to sense quickly evolving road conditions during urban flooding events, which are becoming increasingly frequent.

Jamie Padgett, Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor in Engineering and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, together with Pranavesh Panakkal, a postdoctoral researcher in civil and environmental engineering, analyzed data from nine sources in Houston before developing the comprehensive framework for the automated data system in their research study titled “More eyes on the road: Sensing flooded roads by fusing real-time observations from public data sources,” published in the journal Reliability Engineering & System Safety.

“While sources directly observing flooded roads are limited, urban centers are replete with sources directly or indirectly observing flooding or road conditions,” Padgett said.

Padgett and Panakkal hypothesized that an automated system combining insights from these real-time sources could potentially revolutionize flood situational awareness without significant investment in new sensors.

“This study offers communities a pathway to equitably sense and respond to urban stressors such as flooding using existing data sources,” Padgett said. “It builds off of and is inspired by our longtime collaboration with colleagues in the SSPEED Center at Rice, who have been developing state-of-the-art flood alert systems. Here we focus on flood impacts on transportation infrastructure and focus on understanding how other data sources can complement information from flood models, especially with respect to impact on roadways and safe mobility.”

The framework uses data from sources like traffic alerts, cameras and even traffic speed, and leverages machine learning and data fusion to predict whether a road is flooded or not.

The value of such data sources was evident during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 as many people in Houston — including emergency responders — resorted to manually examining data sources to infer probable road conditions to overcome the lack of reliable real-time road condition data.

To test the OpenSafe Fusion process, the researchers used historical flooding data observed during Harvey to recreate the scenario in the framework, consisting of around 62,000 roads in the Houston region.

“The model was able to observe around 37,000 road links, which is around 60% of the network that we considered, and that is a significant improvement,” Panakkal said.

Other data sources that could be used in the framework include: water-level sensors, citizen portals, crowdsourcing, social media, flood models and a factor the study refers to as “human-in-the-loop.”

This last source is especially important, Panakkal says, as the human element of OpenSafe Fusion allows for responsible artificial intelligence (AI) usage.

“We do not want a system that is fully automated and without any human control,” Panakkal said. “The model may make a wrong prediction, which could endanger community members who decide to risk travel based on this prediction. So we designed safeguards based on responsible AI usage. This need for responsible AI in such tools is still an open area for further work, and we hope to dig deeper as we test our methods in the future.”

The study also considered flooding impacts on community access to critical facilities such as hospitals and dialysis centers during a natural disaster.

“This gives community members or emergency responders an understanding of which roads are flooded and how to safely navigate to a location,” Panakkal said.

Padgett says the researchers hope to pursue extensive testing, validation and exploration of how communities with different scales and resource availability could use this framework to better sense road conditions during a flood.

“Considering climate change impacts and climate-exacerbated weather events, the frequency and intensity of flood events could increase in the future, so we need a solution to better respond to flood events and their impacts on infrastructure,” Padgett said.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation (1951821, 2227467) and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program (2000013194). The content in this press release is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the supporting entities.

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Rice engineers develop AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads Rice engineers develop AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads 2 Rice engineers develop AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads 3

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Dr. David A. Schwartz receives 39th annual Alton Ochsner Award

Dr. David A. Schwartz receives 39th annual Alton Ochsner Award
2024-08-28
NEW ORLEANS – Ochsner Health has announced David A. Schwartz, MD, as the 2024 winner of the Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease. Dr. Schwartz is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Immunology and director of the Program to Advance Physician Scientists and Translational Research at University of Colorado’s Anschutz School of Medicine.  Dr. Schwartz won the 39th annual Alton Ochsner Award for his research on how genetic and environmental factors, including smoking, contribute to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). He found that ...

New data: Solar at K-12 schools quadrupled nationwide during the last ten years

New data: Solar at K-12 schools quadrupled nationwide during the last ten years
2024-08-28
Charlottesville, VA — Schools across the country are rapidly switching to solar power to meet their energy needs while gaining significant cost-savings, boosting climate resilience, and supporting workforce development, according to a new report from clean energy nonprofit Generation180. Since the start of 2014, the amount of solar capacity installed at K-12 schools has more than quadrupled nationwide. According to Brighter Future: A Study of Solar on K-12 Schools, 5th edition, over 6.2 million U.S. K-12 students– or more than one in nine students – now attend a school that utilizes solar power. In 2022-2023, over 800 schools added solar arrays, which is enough ...

Thermochromic material could make indoor temperature control more energy-efficient

Thermochromic material could make indoor temperature control more energy-efficient
2024-08-28
HOUSTON – (Aug. 28, 2024) – Rice University researchers have developed a smart material that adjusts its transparency with changes in temperature, outperforming similar materials in terms of durability, transparency and responsiveness. The new polymer blend could significantly enhance energy efficiency for indoor space cooling, according to a new study published in Joule. Cooling off can be a matter of life or death, but air conditioning ⎯ when and if available ⎯ already accounts for 7% of the world’s energy use and 3% of carbon emissions. With temperatures hitting record ...

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards $4.8 million to exceptional early-career scientists

2024-08-28
The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named 16 new Damon Runyon Fellows, exceptional postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators. This prestigious Fellowship encourages the nation's most promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding ($300,000 total) to investigate cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention. “What is so exciting—and so challenging—about being a postdoc is that you’re called to take what you know and apply ...

Primary care providers urged to assist patients who engage in emotional eating

2024-08-28
August 28, 2024 — Primary care providers are well positioned to address emotional eating because of their long-term relationships with patients, noted Jana DeSimone Wozniak, PhD and Hsiang Huang, MD, MPH, of Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to their article published in Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer, emotional eating is associated with myriad health problems, including the experience of ...

Half of Uber, Lyft trips replace more sustainable options

Half of Uber, Lyft trips replace more sustainable options
2024-08-28
More than 50% of ride-hailing trips taken by surveyed riders in California replaced more sustainable forms of transportation — such as walking, cycling, carpooling, and public transit — or created new vehicle miles, according to a study from the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.  The study was conducted to help guide development of the Clean Miles Standard, a state regulation designed by the California Air Resources Board to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from ride-hailing services.  Published in Transportation Research ...

miR-10b Inhibition: A strategy for treating metastatic breast cancer

miR-10b Inhibition: A strategy for treating metastatic breast cancer
2024-08-28
“We have developed a nanodrug, termed MN-anti-miR10b, that delivers anti-miR-10b antisense oligomers to cancer cells.” BUFFALO, NY- August 28, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on August 26, 2024, entitled, “Inhibition of miR-10b treats metastatic breast cancer by targeting stem cell-like properties.” As stated within the Abstract of the paper, despite advances in breast cancer screening and treatment, the prognosis for metastatic disease remains dismal, with ...

Love is blind for male fruit flies who will choose sex over safety

Love is blind for male fruit flies who will choose sex over safety
2024-08-28
Male fruit flies will become oblivious to physical danger as they become more engaged in courtship and sex, new research shows. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown that pursuit of a coveted reward – in this case a female fly – will cause a male fruit fly to ignore threats such as predation. In the study, published today (28 Aug) in Nature, the team was able to show for the first time the neural networks in the fly’s brain that direct this decision-making process, revealing the neurotransmitter dopamine has a leading role to play. Lead researcher Dr Carolina Rezaval said: “Every day we make decisions that require us to ...

Kidney donors’ risk of death at all-time low

2024-08-28
The risk of death for people who donate a kidney for transplantation — already small a decade ago — has dropped by more than half since then, a new study shows. Each year, roughly 6,000 Americans volunteer to donate a kidney, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Before undergoing the procedure, donors are informed of the potential risks, including death. Based on data from 1995 through 2009, experts had originally predicted that about three of every 10,000 donors were likely to die within three months of the procedure. The authors of the ...

Thirty-year trends in perioperative mortality risk for living kidney donors

2024-08-28
About The Study: Perioperative mortality after living donation declined substantially in the past decade compared with prior decades, to fewer than 1 event per 10,000 donations. Risk was higher for male donors and donors with a history of hypertension. Current guidelines for donor informed consent, based on 2009 data, should be updated to reflect this information. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Dorry L. Segev, MD, PhD, email dorry.segev@nyulangone.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.14527) Editor’s Note: Please ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Thirty-year mystery of dissonance in the “ringing” of black holes explained

Less intensive works best for agricultural soil

Arctic rivers project receives “national champion” designation from frontiers foundation

Computational biology paves the way for new ALS tests

Study offers new hope for babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome

UT, Volkswagen Group of America celebrate research partnership

New Medicare program could dramatically improve affordability for cancer drugs – if patients enroll

Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes

University of Cincinnati Cancer Center presents research at AACR 2025

Head and neck, breast, lung and survivorship studies headline Dana-Farber research at AACR Annual Meeting 2025

AACR: Researchers share promising results from MD Anderson clinical trials

New research explains why our waistlines expand in middle age

Advancements in muon detection: Taishan Antineutrino Observatory's innovative top veto tracker

Chips off the old block

Microvascular decompression combined with nerve combing for atypical trigeminal neuralgia

Cutting the complexity from digital carpentry

Lung immune cell type “quietly” controls inflammation in COVID-19

Fiscal impact of expanded Medicare coverage for GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat obesity

State and sociodemographic trends in US cigarette smoking with future projections

Young adults drive historic decline in smoking

NFCR congratulates Dr. Robert C. Bast, Jr. on receiving the AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research

Chimpanzee stem cells offer new insights into early embryonic development

This injected protein-like polymer helps tissues heal after a heart attack

FlexTech inaugural issue launches, pioneering interdisciplinary innovation in flexible technology

In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity

Methyl eugenol: potential to inhibit oxidative stress, address related diseases, and its toxicological effects

A vascularized multilayer chip reveals shear stress-induced angiogenesis in diverse fluid conditions

AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer's disease and identify a therapeutic candidate

Coalition of Autism Scientists critiques US Department of Health and Human Services Autism Research Initiative

Structure dictates effectiveness, safety in nanomedicine

[Press-News.org] Rice engineers develop AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads