– [ ] Heavy rains have hit both north and south India this year, causing floods, potholes and damaged roads These conditions greatly increase the risk of road accidents. Although weather forecasting technologies exist, road conditions are rarely assessed. To solve this problem, engineers at Rice University have developed an automated data fusion framework called OpenSafe Fusion. OpenSafe Fusion, short for OpenSafe Situational Awareness Framework for Mobility using Data Fusion, integrates public data sources and private reporting systems to monitor road conditions during flood events in cities, are becoming more and more powerful.
Jimmy Padgett, a professor of human and environmental engineering at Rice University, and colleague Pranoosh Pankal, analyzed data from nine sources in Houston to develop this comprehensive framework. Their study, “More faces on the road: Measuring flooded roads by integrating real-time observations from public data sources,” was published in the journal Reliability Engineering and System Safety.