November 02, 2020

Civil and Environmental Engineering doctoral student Maged Shoman

Maged Shoman, a doctoral student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, won the research poster competition at the 2020 TEAMStL Transportation Virtual Fair.

Shoman’s poster topic was “Visualizing Transit System Performance Impacted By COVID-19 Virus: A Case Study of Saint Louis, Missouri.” The research focused on how COVID-19 impacted the St. Louis bus network using Google Transit Feed Specification and Automatic Vehicle Location data. He worked on this project with his advisor, Assistant Professor Yaw Adu-Gyamfi.

“Our (data) framework utilizes a cloud computing architecture for data ingestion, including browser-based, interactive visual analytics,” Shoman said. “The developed platform also provides useful insights into riders’ behaviors in terms of responding to social distance restrictions.”

This research area interests Shoman because COVID-19 is drastically changing commuter behavior. This in turn can affect transportation systems in terms of usage and funding.

“Transportation agencies consider visual data analysis highly important to expose how transportation systems perform and to make more data-driven decisions,” Shoman said. “Understanding the impact of COVID-19 using visual analytics can help in exposing data from different views and potentially make unpredictable discoveries.”

In addition to presenting his research poster, Shoman attended other virtual speeches and events. His favorite presentation was the “City of St. Louis Calming Studies” by Brenna Brown of the City of St. Louis Board of Public Service (BPS). Brown is a project manager in the design division of BPS.

Shoman plans to pursue a career in academia after earning his doctorate. His research interests are Big Data Analytics and Visualization, Machine Learning and Transportation Planning. He is currently vice president of the Mizzou Institute of Transportation Engineers (MizzouITE).