Selected Projects
Operational Safety For Level 4 Automated Driving System Fleets
FUNDED BY NHTSA
Project in cooperation with Transportation Research Center Inc. (TRC) and ToXcel, funded by the U.S. DOT National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The project aims to identify safety risks associated with Level 4 ADS Mobility as a Service (MaaS) operations and the fleet operator's responsibilities and activities to mitigate such risks. To identify the operators’ operational safety responsibilities and propose risk mitigation actions, the team will perform a risk assessment of ADS MaaS operations. The project tasks include: i) conducting hazard identification of Level 4 ADS MaaS operations, ii) performing risk assessment, iii) identifying fleet operators’ operational safety responsibilities, iv) proposing activities that could help fleets mitigate risks and achieve operational safety responsibilities, v) evaluating the mitigation activities.
I am a principal researcher of this project. In this role, I have been developing the framework and methodology for hazard identification using Event Sequence Diagrams (ESDs), Fault Trees (FTs), Concurrent Task Analysis (CoTA) and Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA)
I also supervise a Graduate Student Researcher and an undergraduate student.
Wildfire Safe Egress Simulation Platform
WISE
This project was initially funded by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. It aims at developing a methodology and simulation software to model the evacuation of communities threatened by a wildfire. The Wildfire Safe Egress platform (WISE) integrates fire, traffic, and human behavior models into an agent-based methodology. The software allows users to assess the probability of safe egress of a community considering their unique traffic and socio-demographic profiles in a GIS-based environment.
I am the principal researcher of this project. In this role, I manage the methodology and software development. I engage with stakeholders and define requirements for the methodology and software. I contribute to the human behavior model, identifying and modeling the factors that impact people's decision-making and action-taking during evacuations.
WebApp for Phoenix HRA Application
PHOENIX HRA
This project concerns the development of a Web App for the use of the Phoenix HRA methodology. The development focuses on supporting the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority's (J-NRA) human reliability activities.
I am the Principal Investigator of this project. In this role, I manage a software development team, meet with J-NRA engineers to understand their needs, and translate those to requirements for software development. I also supervise app testing activities and design to improve user experience.
Extensions and Enhancement of Phoenix Human Reliability Analysis Methodology
FUNDED BY THE JAPANESE NUCLEAR REGULATORY AUTHORITY
The project aims to develop further the Phoenix Human Reliability Analysis methodology for Nuclear Power Plants, to support J-NRA analyses. The project was initiated in 2018 and, since then, has been renovated five times. The extensions and enhancements to Phoenix methodology include validation through application to different scenarios and tailoring the elements to J-NRA applications. Recent extensions include Phoenix for digital control rooms, external hazard events, and inspection activities.
I am the Principal Investigator of this project. In this role, I meet with J-NRA engineers to understand their needs and assess how we can support their human reliability activities. I conduct research, write reports and present the results to J-NRA inspectors and engineers.
International Workshop on Autonomous Systems Safety
IWASS
The International Workshop for Autonomous System Safety (IWASS) is a joint effort by the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
IWASS is an invitation-only event that gathers key experts in autonomous systems safety from academia, industry, and regulatory agencies. IWASS aims to identify common challenges related to safety, reliability, and security (SRS) of autonomous systems, covering autonomous maritime, marine, land vehicles and aerospace systems, and to discuss and propose possible solutions for the identified challenges.
IWASS had three successful editions, and it is heading to its fourth one in September 2023, in Southampton (IUK).
I initiated IWASS together with Dr. Christoph Thieme, Prof. Ingrid Utne and Prof. Ali Mosleh. As part of the organizing committee, my role includes strategic tasks such as identifying key topics of autonomous systems SRS to be discussed, stakeholders to be invited, and organizing the reports; and operational tasks such as defining the host-countries for the workshop.
Concurrent Task Analysis For Autonomous Systems Safety
COTA
This project concerns the development and extension of Concurrent Task Analysis (CoTA) for modeling of human, hardware, and software tasks during autonomous systems’ operation. Application for hazard identification, procedures development, failure propagation identification, and others.
The COTA was initially developed in the context of Maritime Autonomous Surface Vessels (MaSS). It has been applied to Autonomous Remotely Operated Vehicles (AROVs). Current developments include extensions and formalization of task types and applications to Autonomous Driving Systems and Autonomous Ferries operations.
While working at NTNU, Dr. Christoph Thieme (SINTEF - Norway) and I developed the CoTA for the safety analysis of autonomous vessels. We continue to apply the CoTA to our projects and extend the method with additional re-description rules.