My research and evaluation in the fields of transportation and safety includes:

Evaluation of the Federal Railroad Administration’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System

C3RS is a novel program that allows labor and management to cooperate on investigating close calls in the railroad industry, identifying root and contributing causes, and implementing corrective actions. It was tested in two freight and two passenger railroads and has since been implemented in a variety of other railroads. The final report of the evaluation of this program can be obtained here. I served as the principal evaluator for this project.

Determining and tracking progress and outcome in R&D

How can the consequences of an R&D effort be determined? This is not an easy question to answer because R&D follows an uncertain course, often shows unexpected results, has short- and long-term consequences, and often has  impacts that are removed from results and findings. Funders and administrators, however, still need trustworthy information on what an R&D effort has accomplished and what it is likely to accomplish. My work here was to develop an assessment tool that could be useful to a variety of stakeholders, and which would provide regular, periodic information on the process and outcome of R&D.

Priority setting for transportation and safety related R&D

A standard difficulty in needs assessment and priority settings is the challenge of working with incommensurable criteria, each of which has a claim on a decision, and each of which has its own unique metric. One tactic for dealing with this problem is to acknowledge the diverse criteria, employ qualitative assessment methods, and try to reach a consensus among parties with different priorities. This approach is well-accepted, often practiced, and entirely legitimate. But this method can be complemented with analytic hierarchy process, (AHP) a mathematical technique that transforms incompatible metrics into a scale-free attribute of matrices, thus allowing direct cross-criteria comparisons. I have conducted AHP exercises for setting R&D priorities.

Consequences of research on tank car standards for the development of tank car regulation

The FRA is heavily involved in setting crash-worthiness standards for tank cars. They are also heavily involved in research to support the standards  that are proposed. The relationship between that research and the standards, however, is by no means obvious because standards are so heavily influenced by politics and by the conflicting interests of numerous stakeholders. This research was an effort to determine what relationship existed between the research and the standards.

Priorities for E3 – Energy, Environment and Engine Program

The FRA’s E3 program sought to project railroad-related needs and priorities into the future. This effort was an exercise in assisting with that process by means of Delphi-based focus groups. The Delphi process is a method of reaching group consensus through a series of one-to-one interviews, thus avoiding the biases that are inherent in group dynamics.