Tribal and Rural Traffic-Safety Digital Twin

Tribal and Rural Traffic-Safety Digital Twin

A cost-effective sensing, simulation, and communication system designed to move rural and tribal safety management from observation toward proactive intervention.

University of Washington · Tribal Transportation Safety Collaboration · Current research

Project story

From question to working system.

This project develops an end-to-end safety decision-support environment for tribal and rural corridors, where conventional data sources are often sparse and timely intervention can be difficult. Mobile sensing units stream video and status data into computer-vision pipelines for detection, tracking, trajectory prediction, and conflict estimation.

The digital twin combines real observations with geometry, control, multimodal road users, operational conditions, microscopic simulation, surrogate safety measures, and spatial risk maps. It separates micro-level interactions from macro-level corridor patterns so analysts can understand both why risk emerges and where it accumulates.

The next implementation step connects digital-twin intelligence with variable message signs. Example logic can translate elevated approach speed, queues, or pedestrian activity into timely warnings—closing the loop from sensing and analysis to a visible safety intervention.

Live sensing

Mobile sensors feed detection, tracking, and risk prediction

2 scales

Interaction-level and corridor-level safety intelligence

4-stage AI

Aggregation, site screening, synthesis, and interactive analysis

Closed loop

Risk detection designed to inform real-time VMS messages

My contributions

Roles and technical work.

  • Digital-twin architecture
  • Computer-vision and trajectory pipeline
  • Micro- and macro-safety analytics
  • Local-LLM corridor safety audit workflow
  • Variable-message-sign intervention logic

Project gallery

Systems, fieldwork, and results.

Resources

Presentations, publications, reports, and links.

Public materials for this project are being prepared. Request project materials ↗