GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The city of Gainesville and the University of Florida have started groundbreaking work on roadway safety thanks to a joint $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Smart and Connected Communities program.
The grant provided financial resources to deploy technological innovations at high-risk intersections throughout the city. Advanced video processing devices applied to roadway infrastructure and artificial intelligence provide university researchers at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and UF Transportation Institute access to automated detection of near miss events and other real-time traffic data.
According to a news release from the city of Gainesville, the results of the collaborative research project are expected to have broad national impacts on traffic management, smart city planning and safety decisions with a goal to create replicable solutions to help communities better understand the risk profile of intersections and to produce risk index models not yet seen in the U.S.
The work directly aligns with the city’s Vision Zero, which is a national initiative aimed at reducing the number of accidents and fatalities to zero. In 2018, more than 40,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to traffic accidents. The city of Gainesville recorded more than 1,800 accidents at intersections.
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