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After massive disasters and catastrophes, communities’ infrastructure and communication systems can be severely affected to the point that they cease to function. Furthermore, the affected areas are supplied with significant amounts of donations, which need to be optimally inventoried, stored, and distributed to benefit those affected while minimizing logistics costs. In these events, it is vital to have disaster response plans in place, and readily available trained personnel who can reach and support the affected areas with critical supplies in time to prevent the loss of lives and property. In 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, a category five hurricane. Non-established relief groups (NERGs) formed immediately after the disaster to reduce the distress of the severely affected population. This research presents a conceptual framework with the key factors to improve the operation of NERGs when participating in the relief efforts after a catastrophic event. The proposed framework considers the steps required for an efficient relief effort, and it is intended to support a well-organized emergency response process by NERGs. Simulation tools were implemented to assess the operations performed by these groups to manage supplies. Various layouts for the space usage distribution and factors that affect the material convergence phenomenon were evaluated. Recommendations are provided for NERGs to improve the efficiency of their activities and increase the benefits offered to the affected communities.

Cost considerations are critical in the analysis and prevention of traffic crashes. Integration of cost data into crash datasets facilitates the crash-cost analyses with all their related attributes. It is, however, a challenging task because of the lack of availability of unique identifiers across the databases and because of privacy and confidentiality regulations. This study performed a record linkage comparison between the deterministic and probabilistic approaches using attributes matching techniques with numerical distance and weight patterns under the Fellegi–Sunter approach. As a result, the deterministic algorithm developed using the exact match of the 14-digit police accident record number had an overall matching performance of 52.38% of real matched records, while the probabilistic algorithm had an overall matching performance of 70.41% with a quality measurement of the sensitivity of 99.99%. The deterministic approach was thus outperformed by the probabilistic approach by approximately 20% of records matched. The probabilistic matching with numerical variables seems to be a good matching strategy supported by quality variables. On record matching, a multivariable regression model was developed to model medical costs and identify factors that increase the costs of treating injured claimants in Puerto Rico.

The road diet concept has been implemented around the United States for more than three decades. Road diets are at the early stages of implementation in Puerto Rico and the use of a Two-Way Left Turn Lane (TWLTL) will be a new and unfamiliar design for local drivers. For this reason, the effectiveness of a TWLTL was evaluated using a driving simulator with local drivers for a segment of highway PR-107 in Puerto Rico. This highway is a suburban commercial corridor without access control that had a 67% increase in crashes between 2015 and 2016. This highway was selected because of its large number of left-turn maneuvers and more than 40% of the total crashes were rear-end type crashes. The University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez Driving Simulator was used to evaluate drivers’ performance by observing vehicle speeds and positions along two simulated road scenarios: 1) the existing cross-section and 2) a modified cross-section with a TWLTL. Subjects were divided into two groups: 1) subjects who received training about the correct operation on a TWLTL before the simulation runs and 2) subjects who did not receive any prior training. The results indicate a positive effect of the educational material on driver behavior. Subjects who received training about the TWLTL showed a 66% increase in maneuver improvement, less variability in the position at which they entered the TWLTL, and lower variance of the mean speed than those who did not receive TWLTL training before driving through the simulation.

Driving simulators have been widely used in transportation research and have potential applications for toll plaza safety research. The University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass-Amherst) performed a collaborative investigation using driving simulators to evaluate drivers’ behavior in two toll plazas with different signage and lane configurations that operate under the U.S. jurisdiction. The studied toll roads were the Caguas South Toll Plaza in Puerto Rico and the West Springfield Toll Plaza in Massachusetts. The major safety issues identified in both toll roads were unexpected lane changes, sudden vehicle stops, and variable speed patterns. The purpose of this study was to exchange research scenarios between UPRM and UMass-Amherst to test drivers who were unfamiliar with the areas of the study and enlarge the scope. Assuming that the patterns of behavior were similar, the results would suggest that drivers’ behaviors from different regions depend largely on the geometry of the toll plaza and not on the driving culture particular to a region. This study will greatly add to the utility of driving simulator studies because the results reported from one region and one toll plaza arrangement should generalize to other regions around the country and to territories. Results show that familiar drivers had a better driving performance, with respect to variability of lane position, when compared with unfamiliar drivers. However, the proposed treatments for each toll plaza improved road safety for both familiar and unfamiliar drivers.

The increased use of smartphones during the last decade has resulted in thousands of crashes per year in the United States and its territories. Drivers’ usage increases are particularly con...

Traffic crashes in suburban school zones pose a serious safety concern due to a higher presence of school-age pedestrians and cyclists as well as potential speeding issues. A study that investigated speed selection and driver behavior in school zones was carried out using two populations from different topographical and cultural settings: Puerto Rico and Massachusetts. A school zone from Puerto Rico was recreated in driver simulation scenarios and local drivers who are familiar with the environment were used as subjects. The Puerto Rico school simulation scenarios were replicated with subjects from Massachusetts to analyze the impact of drivers’ familiarity on the school-roadway environment. Twenty-four scenarios were built with pedestrians, on-street parked vehicles, and traffic flow used as simulation variables in the experiment. Results are presented in terms of speed behavior, reaction to the presence of pedestrians, speed compliance, and mean reduction in speeds for both familiar and unfamiliar drivers.

Toll plaza designs have implemented electronic toll collection and other technologies to improve toll systems; however, an increase in crashes has appeared with these improvements. To study safely the pertinent aspects of driver behavior in toll plazas with electronic toll collection, a cockpit driving simulator housed at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez was used. Specifically, in this study a comparison was made of two configurations of the signs that indicated the corresponding speed limit and toll station for each lane in the area before the toll plaza. One configuration corresponded to the current condition of the signage in Puerto Rico, with signs located at the roadside; the second configuration presented a proposed overhead signage treatment. A representative group of 20 subjects was selected to test the effectiveness of the two signage configurations on the approach zone leading to the toll plaza, calculating the standard deviation of roadway position, speed, and acceleration noise in five zones. The behavior of drivers using the proposed signage configuration appeared to be safer than the behavior of drivers following the current signage configuration. Specifically, at each of five zones in which behavior was sampled on the approach to the toll plaza, drivers using the proposed configuration changed lanes more smoothly and reduced their vehicles’ velocity more when approaching the toll plaza. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference between configurations in acceleration noise. The results of this study provide strong evidence that driving simulators can be used effectively to identify efficient and inexpensive alternative signage configurations at toll plazas.

The Puerto Rico Dynamic Toll Lane (DTL) is a managed lane system for light traffic that combines congestion pricing, reversible lanes and a Bus Rapid Transit system within the median of freeway PR-22. This research aims to evaluate if modified signage and the addition of in-lane pavement markings could help improve operational and safety aspects of the DTL using the UPRM driving simulator. The performance measures used to evaluate driving behavior were vehicle average position, average speed and acceleration noise, which has been used as a surrogate measure to evaluate safety. A total of four virtual scenarios were studied using time of day and traffic flow as independent variables to evaluate two configurations: existing conditions (Configuration 1) and proposed conditions using modified signs and pavement marking treatments (Configuration 2). However, results of the study indicates that there were no significant differences between configurations for the performance measurements evaluated.