Evaluating First Responder Interactions as the AV Market Expands

Date and Time: Wednesday, July 20: 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: Garden 1-3

Virginia Lingham

Assistant Vice President and Director, ITS/CAV, WSP USA

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

This session will create a unique opportunity for dialog between first responders, vehicle technology providers, and those who have planned or led recent deployments. Our overall objective is to gather candid feedback on how things are going, what has worked well, and what could be improved to better define the needs of each stakeholder group and to identify future research topics. The session will begin with short presentations from industry experts to set the stage for the discussion and will wrap up with a focus on policy perspectives to guide future research and activities.

Session Goals/Objectives/Outputs:
Hold an open dialog to reveal actual challenges associated with recent experiences with AVs, exploring various vehicle types.

Advance the state-of-the-practice and awareness of transportation infrastructure protection and emergency management through training, technical assistance, and technology transfer activities.

Identify opportunities for AVs to improve the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of emergency response and emergency management scenarios.

Continue to define research needs to develop connected infrastructure systems for enabling and integrating automated vehicles that are able to help reduce incident response times and improve multimodal safety on the surface transportation network.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Virginia Lingham is a Director at WSP USA helping clients advance strategic technology deployments using innovative techniques, including connected and automated vehicles (CAV) and emerging technologies. She provides state-of-the-art expertise to clients as they implement leading edge mobility programs in an era of rapidly evolving technology and transportation services.

Virginia is a licensed Professional Engineer and holds a master’s degree in transportation engineering with a certificate in management of technology from the University of California Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Wayne State University.

Prior to joining WSP, Virginia served as the CAV Program Manager for Virginia DOT’s efforts around consolidation and coordination of all CAV initiatives. In that role, she represented Virginia DOT on multiple national committees and working groups focusing on the deployment of CV technologies including serving as chair of the CV Pooled Fund Study—a coalition of 27 state DOTs.

Virginia previously served as the CV team lead for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) where she supported the 511 Bay Area Traveler Information program; and as the statewide traveler information program manager at Wisconsin DOT;.

Virginia is an active member of three Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees: Regional Transportation Systems Management and Operations, Trucking Industry Research, and User Information Systems. She has served on several TRB panels conducting research on the industry’s important CV topics. Virginia is also a member of ITS America’s Smart Infrastructure Standing Committee.

In her free time, Virginia enjoys volunteering, traveling the world, and racing BMX.

PRESENTATION FILE