Mona Azarbayjani

Narges Rashvand, Sanaz Sadat Hosseini, Mona Azarbayjani et al.

In urban settings, bus transit stands as a significant mode of public transportation, yet faces hurdles in delivering accurate and reliable arrival times. This discrepancy often culminates in delays and a decline in ridership, particularly in areas with a heavy reliance on bus transit. A prevalent challenge is the mismatch between actual bus arrival times and their scheduled counterparts, leading to disruptions in fixed schedules. Our study, utilizing New York City bus data, reveals an average delay of approximately eight minutes between scheduled and actual bus arrival times. This research introduces an innovative, AI-based, data-driven methodology for predicting bus arrival times at various transit points (stations), offering a collective prediction for all bus lines within large metropolitan areas. Through the deployment of a fully connected neural network, our method elevates the accuracy and efficiency of public bus transit systems. Our comprehensive evaluation encompasses over 200 bus lines and 2 million data points, showcasing an error margin of under 40 seconds for arrival time estimates. Additionally, the inference time for each data point in the validation set is recorded at below 0.006 ms, demonstrating the potential of our Neural-Net-based approach in substantially enhancing the punctuality and reliability of bus transit systems.

Roshanak Ashrafi, Mona Azarbayjani, Hamed Tabkhi

Recent research is trying to leverage occupants' demand in the building's control loop to consider individuals' well-being and the buildings' energy savings. To that end, a real-time feedback system is needed to provide data about occupants' comfort conditions that can be used to control the building's heating, cooling, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The emergence of thermal imaging techniques provides an excellent opportunity for contactless data gathering with no interruption in occupant conditions and activities. There is increasing attention to infrared thermal camera usage in public buildings because of their non-invasive quality in reading the human skin temperature. However, the state-of-the-art methods need additional modifications to become more reliable. To capitalize potentials and address some existing limitations, new solutions are required to bring a more holistic view toward non-intrusive thermal scanning by leveraging the benefit of machine learning and image processing. This research implements an automated approach to collect and register simultaneous thermal and visual images and read the facial temperature in different regions. This paper also presents two additional investigations. First, through utilizing IButton wearable thermal sensors on the forehead area, we investigate the reliability of an in-expensive thermal camera (FLIR Lepton) in reading the skin temperature. Second, by studying the false-color version of thermal images, we look into the possibility of non-radiometric thermal images for predicting personalized thermal comfort. The results shows the strong performance of Random Forest and K-Nearest Neighbor prediction algorithms in predicting personalized thermal comfort. In addition, we have found that non-radiometric images can also indicate thermal comfort when the algorithm is trained with larger amounts of data.

Sanaz Sadat Hosseini, Mona Azarbayjani, Mohammad Pourhomayoun et al.

Climate-driven wildfires are intensifying, particularly in urban regions such as Southern California. Yet, traditional fire risk communication tools often fail to gain public trust due to inaccessible design, non-transparent outputs, and limited contextual relevance. These challenges are especially critical in high-risk communities, where trust depends on how clearly and locally information is presented. Neighborhoods such as Pacific Palisades, Pasadena, and Altadena in Los Angeles exemplify these conditions. This study introduces a community-led approach for integrating AI into wildfire risk assessment using the Participatory AI Literacy and Explainability Integration (PALEI) framework. PALEI emphasizes early literacy building, value alignment, and participatory evaluation before deploying predictive models, prioritizing clarity, accessibility, and mutual learning between developers and residents. Early engagement findings show strong acceptance of visual, context-specific risk communication, positive fairness perceptions, and clear adoption interest, alongside privacy and data security concerns that influence trust. Participants emphasized localized imagery, accessible explanations, neighborhood-specific mitigation guidance, and transparent communication of uncertainty. The outcome is a mobile application co-designed with users and stakeholders, enabling residents to scan visible property features and receive interpretable fire risk scores with tailored recommendations. By embedding local context into design, the tool becomes an everyday resource for risk awareness and preparedness. This study argues that user experience is central to ethical and effective AI deployment and provides a replicable, literacy-first pathway for applying the PALEI framework to climate-related hazards.

Narges Rashvand, Sanaz Sadat Hosseini, Mona Azarbayjani et al.

Bus transit plays a vital role in urban public transportation but often struggles to provide accurate and reliable departure times. This leads to delays, passenger dissatisfaction, and decreased ridership, particularly in transit-dependent areas. A major challenge lies in the discrepancy between actual and scheduled bus departure times, which disrupts timetables and impacts overall operational efficiency. To address these challenges, this paper presents a neural network-based approach for real-time bus departure time prediction tailored for smart IoT public transit applications. We leverage AI-driven models to enhance the accuracy of bus schedules by preprocessing data, engineering relevant features, and implementing a fully connected neural network that utilizes historical departure data to predict departure times at subsequent stops. In our case study analyzing bus data from Boston, we observed an average deviation of nearly 4 minutes from scheduled times. However, our model, evaluated across 151 bus routes, demonstrates a significant improvement, predicting departure time deviations with an accuracy of under 80 seconds. This advancement not only improves the reliability of bus transit schedules but also plays a crucial role in enabling smart bus systems and IoT applications within public transit networks. By providing more accurate real-time predictions, our approach can facilitate the integration of IoT devices, such as smart bus stops and passenger information systems, that rely on precise data for optimal performance.

Sanaz Sadat Hosseini, Babak Rahimi Ardabili, Mona Azarbayjani et al.

Urban design significantly impacts sustainability, particularly in the context of public transit efficiency and carbon emissions reduction. This study explores two neighborhoods with distinct urban designs: South End, Charlotte, NC, featuring a dynamic mixed-use urban design pattern, and Avondale, Chattanooga, TN, with a residential suburban grid layout. Using the TRANSIT-GYM tool, we assess the impact of increased bus utilization in these different urban settings on traffic and CO2 emissions. Our results highlight the critical role of urban design and planning in transit system efficiency. In South End, the mixed-use design led to more substantial emission reductions, indicating that urban layout can significantly influence public transit outcomes. Tailored strategies that consider the unique urban design elements are essential for climate resilience. Notably, doubling bus utilization decreased daily emissions by 10.18% in South End and 8.13% in Avondale, with a corresponding reduction in overall traffic. A target of 50% bus utilization saw emissions drop by 21.45% in South End and 14.50% in Avondale. At an idealistic goal of 70% bus utilization, South End and Avondale witnessed emission reductions of 37.22% and 27.80%, respectively. These insights are crucial for urban designers and policymakers in developing sustainable urban landscapes.