The second meeting of the HCL PAC was held at 10:00 AM on Thursday, May 04, 2000 at CTRE. The individuals presented were:

• Mark Perington, Snyder and Associates
• Bob Sperry, Webster County Engineer
• Bill Schuman, Iowa DOT
• Reg Souleyrette, CTRE
• Ali Kamyab, CTRE
• Keith Knapp, CTRE
• Aemal Khattak, CTRE
• Zach Hans, CTRE
• Michael Pawlovich, Iowa DOT

The purpose of the meeting was to report the project’s current status to the committee and layout our research strategy in the next quarter.

Reg welcomed the committee members and indicated that we spent less than 1/3 of the budget in about 4 months. Next, Ali and Zach presented the strategies that the research team had developed for identification of horizontal curves.

• Bob suggested that adding counties’ maps showing high accident locations and curves on the project’s web site would be very beneficial. This can also be advertised through Steve De Vries at the ICEA Service Bureau.

• According to the Task 3 of the project proposal, an integrated database was proposed to be developed. It was indicated that the current engagement of both Iowa base records and crash records to calculate crash rates is an indication of integrating databases.

• Bill indicated the "Length" strategy’s scripts in Arcview and Geomedia are both suitable in the Iowa DOT database systems.

• The research team will conduct the following three tasks before the next committee meeting:
• Select a strategy, potentially the "Length" method, to identify horizontal curves. To determine the location and length of a curve on a string, Michael Pawlovich will develop an Arcview script in which actual and end-to-end lengths of defined intervals will be calculated [i.e., "Length (defined interval)" method]. The script is expected to be developed by May 18,2000.
• Produce results (accident locations, crash rates as well as statistics analysis of data) for the four selected topics for at least one county.
• Provide recommendations for the long-term maintenance of Iowa DOT database (i.e., recommendations for permanent application in the Iowa DOT).
• Zach will investigate to see if there have been any changes in roadway designs during the past ten years. This will enable us to provide a more accurate statistical analysis of the involved parameters in accident occurrences at a particular roadway (e.g. shoulder width changes).
• Aemal will be provided with accident and related roadway data to determine the significance of the involved parameters (e.g., road conditions, drivers’ age and gender, etc.)
• A progress report will be presented at the next IHRB meeting (June or August) meet.
• The next committee meeting will be formed within the next three to four months.

The meeting adjourned at 11:10 AM.