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ASCE SJ Branch February 2023 Meeting - Rowan EWB
Part I:
Rowan University's Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Chapter is a team of multidisciplinary engineering students who coordinate with faculty from different departments to apply their curriculum to provide sustainable solutions to communities. During the Spring and Fall 2022 semesters, the Rowan EWB Chapter has worked with non-profit organizations in Salem and Pleasantville, NJ as well as international projects in India and Ecuador.
The Rowan EWB Chapter has completed the monitoring and evaluation of the water distribution network constructed in Ranshet Ashram School in Maharashtra, India. This was completed remotely by the EWB-Mumbai team in April due to travel restrictions of EWB-USA. The team collected the field monitoring data to assess the water quality and quantity provided by the pump system constructed in 2020. A short survey was also conducted to assess the community's satisfaction with the system. This pump system continued to work effectively and was maintained well by the community without any issues. In addition, the community expressed satisfaction with the additional water quantity provided by the system constructed by EWB. We successfully met the requirements to closeout of the project. In addition, the team also worked on the trip details for a new project in Ambuela, Ecuador. The community in Ambuela is a small farming community that has water-related issues due to a lack of infrastructure. The current water distribution network is 30 years old and the existing water sources have been destroyed by landslides. The Rowan EWB chapter traveled to Ecuador in January 2023 to investigate the potential water sources in the region, collect field data and establish a formal communication partnership with the community.
Furthermore, the Rowan EWB Chapter was also involved in several local projects in partnership with the local NGOs. We worked in partnership with CROPS NJ in Pleasantville, NJ to complete a wooden ramp in their accessible community garden. This wooden walkway was constructed to ensure that the raised planter beds in the garden were accessible by a wheelchair. In addition, the chapter also worked with "Stand Up for Salem" in Salem, NJ to build a greenhouse. This community garden provides food and vegetables to the community since there are no grocery stores in the town. During Fall 2022 semester, the students were able to extend the garden by moving the fence by 20 ft. In addition, a new greenhouse was constructed in the extended area by the chapter volunteers to continue growing food during the winter seasons.
The Rowan EWB Chapter will return to Pleasantville to complete an irrigation project and will work on developing proposals with solutions for the Ambuela community in Ecuador. Overall, the Rowan EWB Chapter students gained valuable practical experience by working on real-world problems.
Part II:
Thousands of people die every year in the United States due to distracted driving crashes, with distracted driving accounting for 25% of all fatal traffic crashes in New Jersey. Various techniques (e.g., surveys, crash reports, videos, and simulations) were implemented by the transportation safety community to identify and evaluate distracted driving events. However, these methods collect cross-sectional data on individual subjects and do not provide the actual number of distractions on the road. To fill this gap, this study collected longitudinal data on distracted driving events in the state of New Jersey. The method involved a data collection crew continuously driving through the selected corridors to track driver distraction events by manual counting and video recording. The event data on distracted driving was analyzed to find the significance of various temporal features and geometric properties of roadways on distraction rate. The recorded videos were preprocessed, and more than 6000 unique images were extracted for training and testing YOLO-V5, an artificial intelligence (AI) model to detect the driver's distraction. The suggested model performed reasonably well in predicting distracted driving events with a mean accuracy of 85.5%. The results from the analysis of event data demonstrated that cellphone use is the most prominent type of distraction. They also showed that the number of distractions-such as receiving calls, grooming, and talking to passengers-was significantly affected by both the time of day and by roadway type. It is expected that the results obtained from this study will further assist state and local agencies in promoting awareness and reducing distracted driving in New Jersey
Cost: $40 per person; Students Free
Please use PayPal, pay at door or mail check to Treasurer, ASCE SJ Section.
To register, please click the link below
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We hope to see you there!
Sincerely,
Tri Nguyen
SJASCE
tritam.nguyen@stantec.com
856-438-0364
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