“The goal of the Geohazard Research Program is to address complex seismic hazard issues which are essential components for any seismic risk and reliability assessment of our infrastructure.”

The FDHI project is a multi-year, community-based research project coordinated by the University of California initiated in 2018. The objectives of this project are to compile a modern database of coseismic fault displacements, develop models to predict the distribution and amplitude of potential primary and distributed displacements due to surface fault rupture, and develop engineering application guidelines for fault displacement hazard.

Various automated systems require human supervision in complex environments which can be a monotonous task but still requiring a significant degree of attention. If those tasks are decisive to the process and work safety, then it is imperative that operators maintain adequate levels of alertness to execute necessary actions. Specially, the consequences of performance failure by operators in safety-critical task scenarios has increased concerns and drove important research since inattention or distraction could negatively affect the entire system including the integrity of the people on the system.

The AMT pool fund program has recently funded a tabletop analysis of different types of crash scenarios and the subsequent actions by different stakeholders. However, ATMA deployment risks are more than the ones during and after the crash. It is also critical to understand the potential major operational safety risks of ATMA deployment, before the crashes occur, and it is equally or even more important to identify countermeasures to prevent those crashes from happening. Identified and quantified risks and their impacts can further guide DOTs to prioritize these risks and work with DOT engineers to deploy corresponding countermeasures to ensure safety during ATMA deployment and generate additional product requirements.

The Concurrent Task Analysis (CoTA) builds upon Task Analysis (TA) theory and methods. TA was developed in the 1960s and had the initial focus of analyzing human performance. TA has since developed, influenced by the technical challenges in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The CoTA follows a systems perspective rather than emphasizing human performance only: The flexibility of the plans of TA and its hierarchical structure allows modeling the expected behavior of a diversity of parts of the system.

Automated Driving Systems (ADS) offer the potential to reduce crash-related deaths and injuries, improve access to transportation, reduce traffic congestion and emissions, and improve productivity and quality of life for millions of people1. To realize these benefits, ADS vehicles utilize complex sensors, processing, algorithms, and controls to avoid many of the crash scenarios that occur today with human drivers and aspire not to introduce critical new crash scenarios. In addition to addressing safety in the design and development of ADS, methods for establishing and maintaining safe operations throughout deployment may also become an important part of the public’s acceptance for ADS-equipped vehicles.

We conduct analyses of spatial data including electric wire distribution, historic fire cases, flammability, and declivity of vegetative cover, as well as satellite images with GIS to review over 800 polygons throughout northern California and estimated whether the polygons should be added into or removed from the risk area.

The objective of the PSPS-DF is to establish a framework and criteria for hardened electric distribution circuits to remain energized (i.e., "descoped from PSPS") during PSPS conditions that is in accord with the guidelines of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

The purpose of PSPS is to mitigate the risk of utility infrastructure contributing to wildfire risk by proactively de-energizing facilities. We are developing a decision support tool that assist utilities to make better decisions.

The purpose of this project is to help the state of California blend hydrogen with the natural gas pipeline network.

Severe wildfires have become more prevalent and recent events have demonstrated the critical need for more advanced tools for wildfire risk assessment. In this project, we are developing the analytical methodology and tools based on Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) to support the above objective.

The proposed project will aim to develop an improved corrosion risk reduction through an integration of corrosion control knowledge and technology. The results of the project will provide both a computational tool and a guidance document on how to reduce corrosion risk, consistent with NG operator practices and industry standards.