From Virtual to Reality

Dr. Ahsan Habib has been hiring co-op students since 2011. In the past, he mainly hired Planning students; however, he has also been hiring Computer Science students for the past three years. 

Dr. Habib’s research centers around transportation planning. His team collects data and tries to develop predictive models for forecasting traffic flows in the transport network. “Our main job is to understand how people travel from one place to another in multiple cities, and then develop a travel demand forecasting model to estimate our current greenhouse gas emission and our future predicted greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.

Dr. Habib discussed how Computer Science students have helped them better analyze transportation systems by creating visuals. “In recent years, Computer Science students have become very valuable for us to go farther into analytics with better coding programming,” he says, “Before, a simulation would take 19 hours to run, but if a computer science student does the code for us with the subject matter expert from transport planning and engineering, then it runs within 4 to 6 hours.”

Awsaf Hanif Ibrahim is one of the students who has assisted Dr. Habib with his work. Last summer, the third-year computer science student worked with Dr. Habib and DalTRAC on a project that entailed building a simulation of self-driven vehicles and human-driven vehicles on Spring Garden Road in Halifax.

“The simulation was made with the help of unity and C#,” Awsaf says, “During the simulation, we collected various data such as the trajectory coordinates, speed of the vehicle, and reaction times of different types of vehicles.” The team analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of self-driven and human-driven vehicles with the data collected. Eventually, the project integrated a virtual reality experience where a user could drive a vehicle on Spring Garden Road. This allowed subjects to immerse themselves in the experience and provide valuable feedback to the team.

Awsaf’s work on the project was published in a journal for the Transportation Research Board. “Publishing my first journal means a lot to me because during my childhood I wanted to be a scientist,” he says, “By working on the paper, I came to learn about the structure and writing procedure of a journal which will help me in the future. Moreover, I also learnt about how the research sector works.”

Awsaf expressed his gratitude to Dr. Habib and Dr. Alam for providing him with the opportunity and helping him build the model. He also expressed appreciation for the support of the DalTRAC team. "Dr. Habib always supported me with all the tools and software according to my need and his response was very prompt. He is a great mentor, his biggest skill is that he can inspire someone so much that it brings out the inner talent of that individual,” he says, “While working with him I saw my potential. Now I am more confident in my abilities and I can pursue my dream of becoming a scientist one day.”

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