CHARLOTTE, N.C. – An LSU Flores MBA Program student, a master’s in ISDS student and representatives from the E. J. Ourso College of Business’ Highway Safety Research Group were featured presenters at the Association of Transportation Safety Information Professionals’ 2011 Traffic Records Forum, held July 31-August 3. Presenting were Charles Cavalier, Cory Hutchinson, Max Kelly, Christian Raschke, Helmut Schneider and Mark Verret.
Schneider, director of HSRG, served as moderator for the group’s session, “How to Utilize Your Data to Provide Information to Decision Makers in Traffic Safety,” and its multiple panels.
Hutchinson, associate director of HSRG and TRCC coordinator, and Charles Cavalier, who is earning his master’s in ISDS, presented a segment titled “Building Data Warehouses and Using Cubes and Dimensions to Aggregate Data for Fast Web Delivery.” Their presentation described how to build a data warehouse using Microsoft SQL Server. According to their research, using integration services, analysis services, and reporting services along with the crash data and arrest and conviction warehouse will allow building data cubes to more easily interpret crash data along multiple dimensions and to retrieve the aggregated results faster for web delivery.
For the session’s second panel, Schneider and LSU Flores MBA Program student Max Kelly presented a segment titled “Using Microsoft Analysis Services, Power Pivot and Sharepoint 2010 to Create Ad Hoc Analysis of Crash Data.” Because most safety professionals are most familiar with Microsoft Excel, this presentation was designed to demonstrate how to use Power Pivot, an add to Excel 2010, in conjunction with Analysis Services to build pivot table and graphs on the fly to detect trends and patterns in crash data.
Hutchinson joined Verret, network analyst-network/security administrator for HSRG, for the next panel, “Business Intelligence Tools to Better Understand and Display Crash Data to Assist Decision Makers.” Their presentation showed two examples of utilizing SQL Server Reporting Services in providing information to decision makers to observe trends and key performance indicators to judge if programs worked or where additional resources needed to be added.
The final panel was led by Schneider and Raschke, a Ph.D. student in the LSU Department of Economics. The duo’s presentation, “Using Safety Performance functions to Provide a Black Spot Analysis,” discussed finding road sections with higher than expected crashes and gave an overview of how to use data modeling such as the safety performance function to conduct black spot analysis.
The Highway Safety Research Group at LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business is revolutionizing the way traffic accidents are reported in Louisiana through recently developed software. Called the LACRASH system, this software allows police officers to fill out and submit their crash reports electronically, directly from their squad cars. For more information, visit www.bus.lsu.edu/hsrg or call 225-578-2090.
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