Session 5E: Managing Safety Assets at the Speed of LiDAR

Session Description:

Presentation 1: PennDOT District 6-0 is utilizing LiDAR technology to help the Traffic Safety Unit in the implementation of Low-Cost Safety improvements along their State Routes. The pilot program mapped 200 miles of state roads using mobile and aerial LiDAR collection methods to improve efficiency and accuracy of locating the District’s assets. The District is developing ways to automate LiDAR post-processing of signing and pavement marking data to help develop low-cost safety plans more quickly and maintain their inventory using GIS. The project also utilized a new method to evaluate the advisory speed of curves using LiDAR data rather than the traditional and cumbersome ball-bank method.

Presentation 2: Mercer County Department of Transportation & Infrastructure in New Jersey, through funding provided by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, performed a comprehensive, systemic assessment of the location, condition, and warrants for Guide Rail installation to review the conditions in support of upgrade and removal. The county evaluated aerial LiDAR for critical slopes as well as more traditional field collection approaches for this project. A cloud-based GIS served as the central component for the field inventory collection and warrant analysis. The county migrated the resulting inventory data into their GIS-enabled enterprise asset management for reference and planning future project priorities.

Moderator: Nikhil (Nik) Kharva, PE, PTOE, HNTB Corporation

  • LiDAR Technology Used for Low Cost Safety Projects, Paul DiGiacobbe, PE, DBIA, Director, Geospatial Services, Maser Consulting P.A.
  • LiDAR Technology Used for Low Cost Safety Projects, Kevin Poad, PE, Project Engineer, HNTB Corporation
  • LiDAR Technology Used for Low Cost Safety Projects, Ryan Putt, PE, Engineer III, HNTB Corporation
  • GIS as a Platform for Conducting Guide Rail Assessment, George Fallat, PE, Traffic Engineer, Mercer County
  • GIS as a Platform for Conducting Guide Rail Assessment, Janel A. McCoy, GIS Specialist/ Enterprise Asset Manager, Mercer County

Speaker Bios:

Paul DiGiacobbe is the director of geospatial services for Maser Consulting. He is a graduate of Villanova University and a licensed professional engineer in the states of Pennsylvania and Florida. For the past 10 years of his 30-year career, Paul has been testing the limits of LiDAR technology in the infrastructure space. His efforts have focused on the development of 3D as-built modeling and asset management in support of transportation design and maintenance. He has found that the use of mobile LiDAR data acquisition has provided significant improvements in the speed and safety of highway survey operations while providing a robust, immersive, and highly accurate data set useful for a variety analytic and design functions. He now directs the operations for this service provided by Maser Consulting.

Kevin Poad is a highway engineer for HNTB Corporation. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware and a licensed professional engineer in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Throughout his 10 years of experience working on highway and bridge design and rehabilitation projects, he has focused on safety and maintainability of infrastructure. At HNTB, he serves as a design task lead and strives to instill in his team a sense of public duty while providing high quality and cost-effective solutions.

Ryan Putt is a highway engineer for HNTB Corporation. He is a graduate of Penn State and a licensed professional engineer in Pennsylvania. Ryan has more than seven years of experience, which started in construction management and transitioned to highway design. At HNTB, he has had experience with highway and bridge rehabilitation, railroad, and public transportation projects. Currently, he is working to implement low-cost options to improve public safety on state and local roadways.

George Fallat currently serves as the traffic engineer for Mercer County. George has attained a broad range of technical and managerial experience in the transportation engineering and planning fields, having worked previously with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Monmouth County, Michael Baker International, and New Jersey Department of Transportation. In addition, George taught graduate level transportation engineering courses for the New Jersey Institute of Technology and currently serves as an adjunct for Rutgers University. George received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Delaware and a master’s degree in civil engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Janel A. McCoy is a geospatial intelligence analyst and systems administrator with more than 15 years of experience building GIS for asset management, and training government agencies, private industry, and NGOs to do the same. She has a background in both social and physical sciences, as well as multi-source data collection and management. Janel has been the Mercer County DOT&I Transportation Asset Management Information System (T.A.M.I.S.) project lead for seven years, assisting to increase efficiency in maintenance and operating procedures. Her younger days were spent as an archaeologist, employing GIS to map the sands of time and rediscover past civilizations both in the U.S. and abroad.

 
 

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The Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute is Penn State’s transportation research center. Since its founding in 1968, the Larson Institute has maintained a threefold mission of research, education, and service. The Institute brings together top faculty, world-class facilities and enterprising students from across the University in partnership with public and private stakeholders to address critical transportation-related problems.

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