The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is pleased to announce the Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award, part of the Highway Data Analysis Excellence Awards Program, which is designed to encourage university students to use Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) data to investigate a topic that advances highway safety and to develop a paper to document the original research.
The Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award's goal is to encourage university students to use HSIS data with the intent of introducing potential future highway safety professionals to good quality safety data, the application of appropriate research methods to derive recommendations, and the practice of using data to make decisions.
The Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award research paper competition is open to undergraduate and graduate students in degree-granting programs that support highway safety.
Current graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to develop papers for the competition based on their use of HSIS data. Individuals who have graduated from a program within 6 months prior to the submission date are also eligible, if the paper is based on work conducted as part of the program.
The following requirements must be met by all applicants and submissions for the 2023 Award:
* Note: The turnaround time for requested HSIS data, www.hsisinfo.org/datarequest.cfm, is normally less than 2 weeks; however, the time needed to conduct analysis of this data varies per project. Please be sure to plan accordingly and in advance of the paper submission deadline.
Papers submitted to the 2023 competition will be evaluated on the following criteria and assigned point values:
The 2023 online submission process will open January 1, 2023, via the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Awards website and process*.
The turnaround time for requested HSIS data is normally less than 2 weeks; however, time needed to conduct analysis of these data varies per project. Please be sure to plan accordingly and in advance of the paper submission deadline.
| 1st Place | 2nd Place | 3rd Place | |
| A cash Prize will be awared to each lead author of a winning team (1st place: $1,000; 2nd place: $500; 3rd place: $250 United States dollars). | $1,000 | $500 | $250 |
| Authors will be recognized at the ITE 2023 Annual Meeting and Exhibition All authors will be acknowledged, and each lead author of a winning team will receive a plaque. | X | X | X |
| Registration for the 2023 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibition will be provided to the lead author of each winning team only. | X | X | X |
| Lodging (2 nights) will be provided for the lead authors of the 1st and 2nd place winning teams to attend the 2023 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibition. | X | X | |
| Roundtrip, domestic airfare will be provided for the lead author of the 1st place winning team to attend the 2023 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibition. | X | ||
| Publication of the 1st place winning paper will appear in the September 2023 ITE Journal and/or on the HSIS website. | X |
All prizes, including travel reimbursements, are subject to FHWA rules, regulations, and approval at the time of the award.
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA (August 30, 2022) – Cleveland State University graduate student Norris Novat received first place in the 2022 Highway Safety Information System's (HSIS's) Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award competition for a paper titled, "Predicting Drivers' Injury Occurrence in Vehicle Crashes Occurring at Horizontal Curve and Grade Combination Segments." Novat, the paper's lead author, co-authored the work with graduate student colleagues Sia Mwende, Hellen Shita, and Grace Mbiaji. Dr. Carol Tan, Safety Data & Analysis Team Leader at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Safety & Operations R&D, presented the award during the 2022 ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Annual Meeting and Exhibition's Awards Lunch on August 2, 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 9, 2021) – Florida International University graduate student Henrick Haule received first place in the 2021 Highway Safety Information System's (HSIS's) Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award competition. Haule won the top 2021 award for a paper that he, as a lead author, co-authored with MD Sultan Ali and Angela E. Kitali, Ph.D., titled, "Factors Influencing the Severity of Crashes Near Exit Ramps in North Carolina." The award was presented during the virtually hosted 2021 ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Annual Meeting and Exhibition's Power Plenary Session on July 22.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 6, 2020) – Texas A&M University Ph.D. candidate Xiaoyu "Sky" Guo received first place for the 2020 HSIS Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award competition. The winning paper, "Safety Criteria for Selecting a Smart Corridor: Random Forest Approach using HSIS Data from Washington State," demonstrates how the Washington State HSIS data set was used to identify 13 key safety criteria to select a smart corridor using a Random Forest (RF) machine learning algorithm. Guo and coauthors, Yongxin Peng and Chaolun Ma, were presented with the top 2020 HSIS Award during the 2020 ITE Virtual Annual Meeting and Exhibition's Power Plenary session on Thursday, August 6.
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AUSTIN (July 22, 2019)—Florida International University Ph.D. candidate Seyedmirsajad Mokhtarimousavi received first place for the 2019 HSIS Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award competition. The winning paper, "A Time of Day Analysis of Pedestrian-Involved Crashes in California: Investigation of Injury Severity, a Logistic Regression and Machine Learning Approach Using HSIS Data," explores the contributing factors for pedestrian-involved crashes in California. Mokhtarimousavi was recognized during the Award Luncheon at the 2019 Joint ITE International and Texas District Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Austin, Texas.
The HSIS Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award is part of the Highway Data Analysis Excellence Awards Program. It was created to introduce future highway safety professionals to HSIS safety data, the process of applying the appropriate research methods to derive recommendations, and the practice of using that data to make decisions. The competition is jointly administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).
"This year's winning paper is a great illustration of how the HSIS database allows young researchers to gain insights into and explore transportation safety topics of interest to them," said Brian Cronin, FHWA's Acting Associate Administrator for Research, Development, and Technology. "The goal of the awards program is to inspire university students to use HSIS data to investigate a topic that advances highway safety, and we hope these young researchers will continue exploring important transportation safety challenges in the future."
"This prestigious award gives me recognition and exposure, which enables me to inspire other students as I, myself, was inspired by previous winners," said Mokhtarimousavi. "I used the HSIS database to investigate pedestrian-involved crashes in California by time-of-day, which was interesting and important to me because, in recent years, California has ranked among the States with the highest pedestrian fatalities in traffic crashes across the country."
The competition's second-place recipient is Alyssa Ryan, University of Massachusetts Amherst, for the paper "Evaluating Crash Type Likelihood at Various Control Devices: A Multinomial Logistic Regression Using HSIS Data." The third-place recipient is Jianqing Wu, University of Nevada, Reno, for the paper "Analysis of Crash Severity for Hazard Material Transportation Using Highway Safety Information System Data."
This year's HSIS Excellence in Highway Safety Data winning paper will be published in the October 2019 issue of ITE Journal.
As lead author, Mokhtarimousavi received a commemorative plaque, as well as travel and registration for the 2019 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit.
Download complete announcement (PDF)
Awards program encourages students to prepare for a career in highway safety by using high quality data and prioritizing safety in research
MINNEAPOLIS — Two Iowa State University students take the top prize for the 2018 HSIS Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award competition. Megat-Usamah Megat-Johari and co-author Justin Cyr creatively used Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) data to develop the winning paper, "Transferability of Safety Performance Functions (SPFs) Across Jurisdictions: A Comparison of Interstate SPFs between Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington Using HSIS Data," and will be recognized at the Joint ITE International and Midwestern/Great Lakes Districts (MWITE/GLITE) Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Minneapolis, Minn., on August 21.
The competition's second-place recipients are Snehanshu Banerjee and Nashid K. Khadem, both from Morgan State University, for the paper "Factors Influencing Injury Severity in Alcohol-Related Crashes: A Neural Network Approach Using HSIS Crash Data." The third-place recipients are Chennan Xue and Dan Xu, Auburn University, for the paper "Factors Influencing Crash Severity at Rural Horizontal Curves in Maine."
View full 2018 announcement (PDF)
WASHINGTON, D.C. Two Oregon State University students innovatively used Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) data to develop the paper that took the top prize in the 2017 HSIS Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award paper competition. Jason Anderson and co-author Shangjia Dong submitted the winning paper, "Heavy Vehicle Driver Injury Severity Analysis by Time of Week: A Mixed Logit Approach Using HSIS Crash Data," and were recognized at the Joint Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)/Canadian ITE 2017 Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Toronto, Canada, on July 31.
The competition's second-place recipients are Majbah Uddin and Fahim Ahmed, both from the University of South Carolina, for the paper "Analysis of Pedestrian Injury Severity in Motor Vehicle Crashes in Ohio." The third-place recipient is Jin Wang, Auburn University, for the paper "Evaluating the Effects of Intersection Balance on Wrong-way Movements at Partial Cloverleaf Interchanges Terminals to Improve Highway Safety."
View full 2017 announcement (PDF)
(August 15, 2016) ANAHEIM, Calif. – Mahdi Pour-Rouholamin, Ph.D., is the first place winner of the inaugural Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) Research Paper Competition for his paper "Analyzing the Severity of Motorcycle Crashes in North Carolina using HSIS Data." He accepted his award today at the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) 2016 Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Anaheim, Calif.
The HSIS Research Paper Competition encourages university students to use HSIS data with the intent of introducing potential future highway safety professionals to quality safety data, the application of appropriate research methods to derive recommendations and the practice of using data to make decisions. The competition is jointly administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and ITE.
View full 2016 announcement (PDF)
HSIS is a safety database that contains crash, roadway inventory, and traffic volume data for a select group of States and cities. The participating agencies were selected based on the quality and quantity of data available, and their ability to merge data from various files. FHWA uses the HSIS to support the FHWA safety research program and provides input for program policy decisions.
The FHWA has used HSIS data to analyze a large number of safety problems. These safety problems can range from the more basic "problem identification" issues to identifying the size and extent of a safety problem to modeling efforts that attempt to predict future crashes from roadway characteristics and traffic factors.
The FHWA also provides HSIS data to professionals conducting research under the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, universities, and others studying highway safety. Results from many of the studies have been used to develop new safety policies and establish improved safety practices.
The HSIS Research Paper Competition is jointly administered by FHWA and the Institute of Transportation Engineers.