Obtaining proper occupant restraint fit when using a wheelchair as a motor vehicle seat is often difficult to attain with vehicle-mounted restraint systems. The comprehensive evaluation conducted in this study illustrates the occupant crash protection benefits of wheelchair-integrated restraint systems, as compared to vehicle-mounted restraint systems. Using computer crash simulation, occupant ...

The effect of residential neighborhood characteristics on a child's risk of serious motor vehicle traffic occupant injuries was evaluated in New York State, USA, for the years 1993-2003, with particular focus on the effect of neighborhood walkability. Risk increased significantly (p < 0.0001) with decreasing street connectivity and as more workers commuted more than 30 min using means other tha...

This paper presents an estimate of the probability of serious occupant injury in frontal crashes based on two vehicle acceleration-based metrics: the 10 ms peak acceleration and the 50 ms peak acceleration. Both of these metrics are used to evaluate injury potential in crash test involving roadside hardware, such as guardrail. For this study, Event Data Recorder (EDR) data provides vehicle kine...

This work introduces personas, descriptions of fictional individuals used in the field of human-computer interaction, into the simulation of building performance. The ultimate goal is to reduce the impact of buildings on the environment by helping architects predict the energy demand associated with different design options. As energy consumption patterns are largely dependent on human activiti...

There are many research efforts that focus on converting everyday environments into intelligent and computationally active environments that support and enhance the abilities of its occupants in executing their activities. Such environments must have the ability to recognize the activities performed by its occupant, maintain a real-time model of the environment, address the occupant’s privacy a...

This paper used the Hyper Mesh and LS-DYNA software to establish a dummy-seat finite element simulation model. The head, chest and neck injury of the dummy were analyzed respectively in the frontal impact and rear impact. It was indicated that modification of seat was needed to meet the requirements. The simulation results showed that the original model cannot provide effective protection for t...

Occupant behavior has a significant impact on building energy performance. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the stochastic characteristics of manual solar shades and their influence on building energy performance. A co-simulation for occupants’ stochastic control of manual solar shades was conducted and the statistic indicators (non-parameter tests and autocorrelation function) were cal...

Minimizing energy usage and increasing occupant comfort are the two primary objectives of intelligent and eco-friendly buildings. Energy savings of up to 70%, combined with significant occupant productivity gains are possible via the application of wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN). Despite the increasing interests in WSAN-based wireless intelligent lighting control, no prior survey ...