Hamid Athab Eedan Al-Jameel

The high number of accidents spreading through Al-Najaf city is dangerous index for safety level. This study tries to shed light on the number of accidents and suggested suitable solutions even by previous studies for the traffic collision problems. The study includes different aspects such as making different interviewing with traffic policemen in Al-Najaf traffic directorate in order to know the causes of accidents and the system of accident recording. The study indicates that the most anticipated causes are the unlicensed drivers traffic operators in addition the locations with high frequency of accident is roundabouts and the most urgent improvement to reduce from accidents is the trained drivers; these have been observed in the questionnaires of selected people in this study.

Аннотация Цель - выбор и обоснование вида городского транспорта в г.Наджаф (Ирак), который обеспечит повышение безопасности и скорости передвижения пассажиров, при улучшении экологических показателей (снижение шума, вибрации, загрязнения воздуха и т.д.). Методы – анализ транспортной ситуации г.Наджаф и используемых видов общественного городского транспорта в мировой практике, достоинства и недостатки, провозная способность.

To identify effective management and maintenance, Pavement management system (PMS) involves systematic activities to this, based on Pavement condition index (PCI). To calculate PCI value for “Al Shahid Mohammed Ali Al Hassani” road branch in Al-Muthanna governorate, Al- Rumaitha city, used PAVER 5.2.3 program. The length of the selected road is 2 km and two lanes in each direction. After sampling process, visual survey is managed for studying type, level of severity and quantity of distress in the sample units at the selected road. Further, collection road for selected road are inventoried and estimated using PAVER 5.2.3 to compute the PCI. As the PCI of the inspected pavement was “85” that means the pavement needs preventive maintenance. Each type of distresses has been studied to identify failure causes. The treatments of each type of distresses have been suggested as a countermeasure. These treatments include pothole patching, crack filling and isolated overlay.

Permeable paving has been vastly utilized as an alternate to traditional impervious hard surfaces, such as street, parking lots, sidewalk and pedestrian areas. This leads to several rain water management and environmental advantage. Therefore, this study has focused on brief the wide-range of permeable pavement systems. These types of permeable pavements have been reviewed in addition to the usefulness of each kind. The results indicated the potential of using such kind in different locations in Iraq is more likely such as Al-Najaf city. Several points of soil investigations have been conducted by previous studies within Al-Najaf city (boundary of Al-Najaf Municipal) prove that Al-Najfa soil is sandy soil. These tested points also demonstrate that the soil characteristics of the city are so suitable for such type of pavement.

Finding a vacant parking space nowadays is time and fuel consuming. This problem may cause drivers to get frustrated and eventually improper parking will appear. The universities, in particular, are one of these places, which needs more attention for providing parking services. Therefore, this study has focused on finding the parking required for such facilities and the benefit of applying smart parking services there. The main campus of the University of Kufa has been evaluated by collecting parking data for both on-street and off-street parking. The results of field data show a clear lack of parking space for most of the faculties in the main campus. The required additional parking spaces are 260.This study has suggested using the smart parks. The model of smart park system has been introduced by this study as a solution to the parking problem, especially in the university and generally in other places. Arduino and ultrasonic sensors were used to detect the empty places in a park and display this status to the screen. The model has been applied at the park of College of Engineering with encouraging results.

International Journal of Engineering and Technology

Traffic accidents are considered as one of the main causes of death in the world. In order to reduce number of accidents, traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. In Kurdistan, more than 1,000 inhabitants are killed in road accidents every year and about 200,000 are injured. This study focuses on investigating the reasons of accidents occurring along Duhok-Zakho international road, and identification of high accident locations (HALs) using accident number, accident rate and rate quantity control methods. Data such as the type of accident, the causes for each type, the traffic flow and geometric design have been collected for nine segments of the road from 2013 to 2016. The results indicate that the rear-end collision is the highest frequency among other types of accidents and the year 2014 has the highest number of accidents. There is an urgent need for specific countermeasures to be implemented (e.g. installing more speed limit camera, lane marking). Hence, this study has shed light on this road to find the optimum solution for such safety problem

Recently, the number of accidents in Iraq increases sharply after 2003 as the number of vehicles increases rapidly. The absence of adequate documentation system leads to unclear picture of the cause of these accidents. Therefore, this study tries to put the first step toward recoding the accurate details of the accidents. The GIS technique has been adopted as a knowledge base for the accidents recording along different types of roads within Al-Najaf city as study case. Reference points have been suggested on roads using electrical columns which already were installed along these roads. To link these referencing points together with GIS, there is a need for new accident form. This form will includes, in addition to the types of accidents, the causes of accidents and the name of roads, the referencing point which is close to the accident location. This system has been built according to field data collecting from miscellaneous resources. The developed model is able to indicate the black spot location (i.e. the location with high frequency of accidents) by change the color of points or segments relating to black spot. The developed system now is ready to be used by the authority of traffic. Keywords: Traffic accidents, safety, GIS, expert system, countermeasures.

Assessment lane changing behavior in local rural roads

Journal of Babylon

Journal of University of Duhok, Iraq

Modeling driver behavior is the corner stone for any traffic simulation model. Driving behavior is a complex task to mimic the reality by simulation model. This study has focused on collecting field data from several rural road sites. These data include lane utilization, lane changing and headway. Then, a simulation model has been developed for representing the driver behavior at rural roads. Car-following model developed in this study is safety one. Then, lane changing hybrid model has been developed according to the suggested assumptions by previous studies and collected field data to match the real behavior. Gap acceptance model has been adopted from previous studies which show good consistency with real driver behavior through comparing with other characteristics such as lane changing and lane utilization. The developed model has been calibrated with field data and showed encouraging results.

Abstract

Investigated Characteristics of weaving sections from field data and developed simulation model

Recently, different programs or methods have been produced to solve the traffic problem everywhere in the world. Iraq is one of the countries which suffer from high problems in traffic operation, design and planning. Therefore, to use the sophisticated traffic programs or models such as simulation models there is an urgent need to investigate specified field parameters which correspond to calibrated parameters used in the model under study. This study has focused on studying driver behavior which represents the core stone in a traffic simulation. This behavior represents lane changing (LC) and lane utilization (LU) in normal sections. Three normal sections with three lanes have been selected in different sites in Iraq: two sites in Al-Najaf city and one site in Al-Muthna city. The results of data analysis show that the driver behavior in both LC and LU is similar to the behavior in the UK. The current observed data could be used for the calibration process for any traffic simulation model in order to mimic the reality of Iraqi drivers.

The sustainability represents a measure of the efficiency for the urban structure. Al-Najaf city is one of the most important cities in Iraq in terms of religious and historical issues. This study tries to assess AL- Najaf Urban structure – as a sample of Iraqi cities- in the light of sustainable to investigate the extent of the application of urban sustainability principles such as how the density of the population distributed across different quarters, the land use and the hierarchy of the roads in the city. GIS program has been adopted to represent the city and the length of roads. The results of this study indicate that the AL- Najaf urban spatial structure is inefficient, It contains a lot of faults, the city lacks in the hierarchy of roads and land use, which spread across a large area, the population density distribution is irregular, most densities are farther away from the city center, which leads to long trips and random and irregular in it.

Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC), University of Salford, UK.