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 HSIS data to investigate a topic that advances highway safety and to develop a paper (2,500-5,000 words) to document the original research.
The 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, including, but not limited to, engineering, planning, statistics, psychology, and economics.
Participants who have graduated from a program within the six months prior to the submission date are also eligible, if the paper is based on work conducted as part of the program. Students are encouraged to develop papers for the contest based on their use of HSIS data for class projects or for graduate thesis and dissertation projects.
The following eligibility requirements must be met by all applicants on a submission for the 2018 Award:
Submissions by individual students or groups of students will be considered. Teams, however, must define one lead student and contributing students for the project. (Prizes reflect this requirement.) Faculty can participate in an advisory role but cannot be coauthors on the paper.
| 1st Place | 2nd Place | 3rd Place | |
| Cash Prize Winning authors will receive cash prize (1st place: $1000; 2nd place: $500; 3rd place: $250 USD). | $1,000 | $500 | $250 |
| Recognition at the ITE 2018 Annual Meeting and Exhibit (August 20-23, 2018, Minneapolis, MN) All authors will be acknowledged and receive a plaque. | X | X | X |
| Registration for the 2018 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit (August 20-23, 2018, Minneapolis, MN) will be provided to the lead author only. | X | X | X |
| Lodging (2 nights) will be provided for the lead author to attend the 2018 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit (August 20-23, 2018, Minneapolis, MN) | X | X | |
| Roundtrip, domestic airfare will be provided for the lead author only to attend the 2018 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit (August 20-23, 2018, Minneapolis, MN). | X | ||
| Paper will be published in the ITE Journal and/or on the HSIS website. | X |
All prizes – including travel reimbursements – are subject to FHWA rules, regulations and approval at time of award.
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.