The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) is awarding Cleveland State University a $500,000 grant to enhance environmental quality and efficiency in public transit. 

Professors Stephen Duffy, Nigamanth Sridhar and Nick Zingale will be collaborating with researchers from Case Western Reserve University via the CWRU/CSU Internet of Things Collaborative (IOTC) on a project titled, “Implementing On-Board Sensor and Real Time Data Acquisition Capabilities in Transit Vehicles.”

The project seeks to develop and evaluate on-vehicle sensor systems focused primarily on rail maintenance and bus emissions. These systems will be capable of transmitting, archiving and interpreting data in addition to providing information for monitoring on-time performance and passenger wait times for GCRTA’s vehicles. The effort builds on a previous project conducted by the IOTC that developed a sensor monitoring system for public vehicles used by the city of Lakewood, OH.

“IOT technologies are allowing government agencies to better monitor and improve numerous services they provide to the public,” Duffy says. “This project will enhance performance and reduce emissions for public transit systems within the Cleveland region, while generating significant data sets that can be utilized by additional researchers and managers to further advance operations for the GCRTA.”

Duffy is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of CSU’s University Transportation Center, Sridhar is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and dean of the College of Graduate Studies, and Zingale is an associate professor in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.

The IOT Collaborative was formed by CSU and Case Western Reserve in 2017 thanks to generous support from the Cleveland Foundation. It seeks to enhance research, education and technology transfer related to the Internet of Things, while also positioning Cleveland as a leader in digital innovation. For more information, visit iotcollaborative.org.