Earlier this week, Halifax hosted the largest Transportation Conference in Canada. The Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) and Intelligent Transportation Systems Canada (ITS Canada) teamed up to organize the 2019 TAC-ITS Joint Conference and Exhibition. This conference saw over 400 presentations split up into 70 sessions, panel discussions, workshops and keynote presentations that touched on topics from road operations and safety to connected autonomous vehicles and other forms of new mobility. DalTRAC was fortunate enough to share our research in five different presentations and one panel discussion.

The panel session discussed the importance of emergency management, flood and evacuation traffic modelling, and evacuation preparedness. In the wake of Hurricane Dorian, it is clear that discussions like these are precedent in Nova Scotia. Speakers at this session included Dr. Ahsan Habib, Director of the School of Planning and DalTRAC; Dr. Kevin Quigley Professor and Director of the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance; Erica Fleck, Division Chief Emergency Management with Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency; And Emilie Pothier, a recent Bachelor of Community Design grad and Research Assistant at DalTRAC.

That same morning, PhD Candidate MD Jahedul Alam presented his research on evacuation route determination based on a mass evacuation mircosimulation Model. Later that afternoon, DalTRAC hosted a seminar with guest Dr. Eric Miller who presented his and his student’s research on analyzing mobility service data in the city of Toronto.

The next day was a busy one for DalTRAC. In the morning, Dr. Ahsan Habib presented his and his student’s, Pauline Laila Bela’s, research on the development of an urban transport network and emission model for the city of Halifax. In the same session, PhD Candidate, Nazmul Arefin Khan, presented his work on a microsimulation of mode choice decisions within an activity-based shorter-term decision simulator. That afternoon, Dr. Ahsan Habib presented two more presentations, the first discussing the research by Dr. Habib and Research Assistant, Stephen McCarthy on the relationships between travel behaviour and health and the second presenting the research by Dr. Habib and Project Coordinator, Katie Walker on the planning considerations and research needs of new mobility through a participatory approach.

We would like to that all of those who came out to watch our presentations as well as the organizations that sponsored and hosted the event.