Research centers to receive $24 millionCUBRC, MCEER projects to focus on transportation injuries, seismic performance

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor

Two research centers affiliated with UB each will receive $12 million over the next six years under the federal Transportation Equity Act for the 21st century, signed on June 9 by President Clinton.

The Calspan-University at Buffalo Research Center (CUBRC) will receive $12 million to establish a Center for Transportation Injury Research to develop and evaluate systems and technologies to improve management of the transportation and emergency-response systems to reduce injuries and deaths from vehicle-related crashes.

The Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), headquartered at UB, will receive $12 million to apply its expertise to improving the seismic performance of the nation's surface transportation system.

The funding to MCEER will extend work begun by it in 1992 under two Federal Highway Administration contracts that has focused on retrofitting federal-aid highways, bridges and tunnels. That work has generated guidelines that MCEER will apply to other surface transportation facilities.

"With this legislation, Congress recognizes the significant success MCEER has had in using multidisciplinary teams of experts to study and develop new methods of seismic protection for our nation's roads and bridges," said President William R. Greiner.

"Congressman Jack Quinn deserves a great deal of credit for investing an enormous amount of time and effort to secure this funding," said Greiner. "Congressmen Sherwood Boehlert, John LaFalce and Bill Paxon also provided important support for our efforts, as did Senators Daniel Moynihan and Alfonse D'Amato. We thank them as well."

According to George C. Lee, MCEER director, the nation's transportation system is the world's largest, supporting more than 4.3 trillion miles of passenger travel and 3.6 trillion ton-miles of goods movement annually. It includes highways, transit systems, railroads, airports, waterways and ports, and pipelines.

"But except for some of the highway bridges, very little of this vast network has been designed and constructed with earthquakes in mind," Lee said.

Despite the fact that 39 states have been identified as having either moderate or significant earthquake risk, he added, there are no national guidelines or requirements for the seismic design of transportation systems, other than those developed for highway bridges.

"During the past six years, our concentrated effort to look at better ways to retrofit highways, roads and bridges and other components has been generating very useful guidelines," Lee said. "Now we will be able to apply these efforts to other surface transportation facilities in the U.S.

"Our goal is to develop national seismic-design methodologies and guidelines for these systems and to determine the most cost-effective techniques for retrofitting existing ones."

The new Center for Transportation Injury Research being established by CUBRC will develop and evaluate systems and technologies to improve management of the transportation and emergency-response systems to reduce injuries and loss of life resulting from vehicle-related crashes.

"CUBRC's Center for Transportation Injury Research addresses a critical national need-reducing the level of injuries and fatalities on the nation's highways," said Thomas McMahon, CUBRC executive director.

McMahon said the center will bring together experts in emergency medicine and transportation-safety research to address crash and injury prevention, as well as to look at how to mitigate the personal and economic costs of crashes that do occur.

An important focus of the center will be the development of technology to improve the delivery of emergency-medical services to victims of rural crashes. Nearly 60 percent of all traffic fatalities occur in rural areas, where delays in crash notification and the delivery of emergency and definitive medical care are likely to occur.

"The Center for Transportation Injury Research will maximize the existing cooperative relationship between UB and Calspan by integrating their strengths," said President Greiner, who is chair of the CUBRC Board of Directors. "As a result, we expect there to be important improvements in highway safety that will decrease the number of fatalities.

"This partnership exemplifies what is possible for our region when we work together," Greiner added. "By leveraging UB's strength in the area of clinical research with those of Calspan, a world leader in aeronautics, defense and transportation research and development, we have brought a total of $48 million in research funding into Western New York during the past 15 years."

Joseph Allen, Veridian board chair and a member of the CUBRC board of directors, noted that Veridian's Calspan Operations has been a world leader in transportation safety for more than 50 years.

"The establishment of this new center, the result of Representative Jack Quinn's leadership in the House, is an extension of Veridian's corporate values and culture as we work toward making our nation's highways safer for everyone," he said.

Quinn, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, requested and helped secure the funding for the new program in the transportation bill.

"The CUBRC center will have a significant impact on improving the safety and efficiency of our highways," he said. "The joint research project will help save lives in Western New York and around the country by using the most up-to-date and innovative technology available."

The new funding complements research efforts currently under way by the UB Department of Emergency Medicine and Calspan involving real-world testing of advanced technologies to provide automated notification of crashes and improve links to the 911 system.

"The center will apply systems-engineering methodologies to advance the state of the art for crash-notification and response systems," said Edward Starosielec, vice president of Calspan's Transportation Group.

"We need to consider all possible linkages, data requirements and necessary infrastructure to improve how emergency-response systems work. We want to identify technologies and systems that can work together across the entire spectrum from crash avoidance to crash notification and emergency response, and identify areas where we can develop or test specific technology solutions."

According to Calspan and UB researchers, automated crash-notification and response systems are a critical element of improving the highway and transportation "safety net."

Through the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), cellular communications networks and advanced vehicle electronics, the researchers hope to exploit and improve on current capabilities, as well as identify and test new systems that will provide emergency-service personnel with new tools for delivering better and faster care to crash victims.

Dietrich Jehle, M.D., associate professor and vice chair of the UB Department of Emergency Medicine and an investigator on the CUBRC project, said the emergency-medicine aspects will include evaluating and testing new tools to correlate crash severity and injury severity.

"This represents a critical knowledge gap for those of us involved in the practice of emergency medicine, and represents an area for potentially significant savings in lives and reductions in injury severity," said Jehle, director of the Emergency Medicine Department at the Erie County Medical Center.

He noted that the UB Department of Emergency Medicine and the emergency department at ECMC, which has some of the best survival rates for trauma centers in New York State, are particularly well-versed in gathering and analyzing this type of information.

Anthony J. Billittier, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine at UB, and Alan Blatt, principal engineer with Calspan, will provide technical leadership on medical and engineering issues relative to the project.