Dr. Rajesh Paleti
Dr. Rajesh Paleti, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, recently received the Best Travel Behavior Paper award in the 2015 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Data Contest. The award was based on his submission titled "Household-Level Vehicle Resources Allocation Model for Analyzing Short Term Vehicle Use Decisions." Paleti was recognized for this accomplishment at the National TRB Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C.
Organized by the TRB Statistics Committee, which deals with the application of statistical methods in the transportation arena, the contest asks participants to react to a given situation. The committee identified two problems in transportation safety and travel behavior and then provided researchers a common dataset for examining these problems and arriving at a solution.
In the travel behavior contest area - the category in which Paleti's paper was judged - the specific objective was to examine short-term vehicle use decisions. As an example, household use of vehicle resources on a daily basis might be examined. Because short-term vehicle use decisions translate into energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, this investigations have important future implications.
Study findings were presented during a workshop at the annual TRB Conference, a global event attended by nearly 12,000 professionals from around the world with several workshop, podium, and poster presentation sessions spanning a wide range of topics in transportation.