ALBERT

Description: The geosciences are one of the least diverse disciplines in the United States, despite the field's relevance to livelihoods and local and global economies. Bias, discrimination, and harassment present serious hurdles to diversifying the field. These behaviors persist due to historical structures of exclusion, severe power imbalances, unique challenges associated with geoscientist stereotypes, and a culture of impunity that tolerates exclusionary behaviors and marginalization of scholars from underserved groups. We summarize recent research on exclusionary behaviors that create hostile climates and contribute to persistent low retention of diverse groups in the geosciences and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. We then discuss recent initiatives in the US by geoscience professional societies and organizations, including the National Science Foundation-supported ADVANCEGeo Partnership, to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion by improving workplace climate. Social networks and professional organizations can transform scientific culture through providing opportunities for mentorship and community building and counteracting professional isolation that can result from experiencing hostile behaviors, codifying ethical practice, and advocating for policy change. We conclude with a call for a reexamination of current institutional structures, processes, and practices for a transformational and equitable scientific enterprise. To be truly successful, cultural and behavioral changes need to be accompanied by reeducation about the historical political structures of academic institutions to start conversations about the real change that has to happen for a transformational and equitable scientific enterprise.

Description: Effective management of highway networks requires a thorough understanding of the conditions under which vehicular crashes occur. Such an understanding can and should inform related operational and resource allocation decisions. This paper presents an easily implementable methodology that can classify all reported crashes in terms of the operational conditions under which each crash occurred. The classification methodology uses link-based speed data. Unlike previous secondary collision identification schemes, it neither requires an a priori identification of the precipitating incident nor definition of the precipitating incident’s impact area. To accomplish this objective, the methodology makes use of a novel scheme for distinguishing between recurrent and non-recurrent congestion. A 500-crash case study was performed using a 274 km section of the I-40 in North Carolina. Twelve percent of the case study crashes were classified as occurring in non-recurrent congestion. Thirty-seven percent of the crashes in non-recurrent congestion classified were identified within unreported primary incidents or crashes influence area. The remainder was classified as primary crashes occurring in either uncongested conditions (84%) or recurrent congestion (4%). The methodology can be implemented in any advanced traffic management system for which crash time and link location are available along with corresponding archived link speed data are available.