Salvatore CAFISO

Salvatore Cafiso, Master of Science in Civil Engineering in 1987, he was enrolled as research assistant in 1991, associate professor in 2001 and from 2017 he is full professor of “Road, Railways and Airport” at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of University of Catania.

He has been involved both in teaching and research in the field of transportation engineering since 1987. Several of his courses involve design elements and roadway focusing on highways design and safety while addressing the needs of all facility users (drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists).  His research expertise includes highway geometric design, traffic safety, pavement engineering and road asset management. He has been successful in securing research funds in these areas from local, national and international agencies. The dissemination of this research includes more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and peer-reviewed conference papers and presentations in international conferences.

He is scientific coordinator of the Spin-off "Infrastructure & Transport Engineering Research - ITER" at the University of Catania, 

UNIVERSITY SERVICE

Director of Transport Infrastructure Laboratory at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture – University of Catania (2010-2019)

Coordinator of the PhD course in “Engineering of road infrastructures” at Catania and Messina Universities (2000-2013).

Erasmus Coordinator (2010-2019)

Teaching “Highway Geometric design”; “Pavement Engineering”

RESPONSABILITY IN RESEARCH PROJECTS

- PRIN 99: Italian Ministry of Research: Analysis of the interactions between road system elements and the human factor for optimizing design standard criteria (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- PRIN 2000: Italian Ministry of Research: Pavement maintenance system and treatments effectiveness for road safety (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- PRIN 2001: Italian Ministry of Research: Relevance of driver – highway system on human behaviour with respect to road safety (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- PRIN 2002: Italian Ministry of Research: Model development for safety assessment of road section based on operating speed scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- PRIN 2003: Italian Ministry of Research: Analysis of driver behavior in function of road and environment characteristics. Safety assessment and treatment design. (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- PRIN 2004: Italian Ministry of Research: Integrating human factor evaluation in the design process of roads – a way to improve safety standards for rural roads (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- PRIN 2006: Italian Ministry of Research “Road safety in complex environment. Theoretical experimental models for preventive safety road design” (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- 2004: DGTREN European Commission: Project IASP Identification of Hazard Location and Ranking of Measures to Improve Safety on Local Rural Roads (PI of the project)

- 2004-2011 National Safety Plan: in the field of monitoring centers set up previewed by the National Plan of Road Safety, prof. Cafiso was scientific responsible of research projects with the Sicily Region and the Regional Province of Catania, Siracusa and Ragusa for the Accident Analysis, Safety Audit for new road projects and Safety review for existing roads and the monitoring of the effectiveness of the rehabilitation interventions for road safety

- 2009, Italian Ministry of Industrial development, “Preventive Safety for eco-compatible Urban BUS” (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- 2010: DGTREN European Commission: Pilot4Safety - Pilot project for common EU Curriculum for road safety experts: training and application on Secondary Roads (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- 2013: EU TEMPUS - HiT4Med - Highway and Traffic Engineering: Curricular Reform for Mediterranean Area (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- 2014 CEDR Transnational Road Research Programme (CEDR-TRRP) 2013: ESReT European Safety Review Tool (scientific responsible of the operating unit of the University of Catania)

- 2014: Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR): call MIUR StartUp (PON “R&C”). Project: “WIKI Roads Map” (project PI).

- 2018-2020: Italian Ministry for Environment: Recovery and reuse of volcanic dash from Etna (scientific responsible of the operating unit)

- 2020: P.O. FESR SICILIA 2014/2020: SAFE-DEMON: SAFE Driving by E-health MONitoring

SCIENTIFIC AWARDS

1997 Best paper safety International Road Federation XIII world Meeting: “Statistical Analysis of Accidents on Italian Highways”

2004 Best Paper in poster session SIIV II International Congress: “in Field Data Collection for Driving Behavior using DIVAS Instrumented Car”

2015 Best paper Transportation Safety Management, TRB Annual Meeting: “Reliability Based Assessment of Benefits in Roadway Safety Management”

MEMBERSHIP IN SCIENTIFIC BOARD

2012 – 2016 – US Transportation Research Board - ANB10 “Transportation Safety Management” Committee

2007 – 2016 – US Transportation Research Board - AFB10 “Geometric Design Committee”

2016 – present – US Transportation Research Board – AKD10 “Performance Effects of Geometric Design” Committee

2016 – present – US Transportation Research Board – ACS10 “Transportation Safety Management Systems” Committee

2002 – present – US Transportation Research Board - International Symposium on Highway Geometric Design

Member of steering Committee

2012 – present - Permanent International Association of Road Congress (PIARC) - National Technical Committee CT.3.1b " Design of road Infrastructures" – CT 2.4 Esercizio della rete stradale - ITS

2010 – 2014 - International Road Federation - Group of Expert in Road Safety

2006 – present - European Commission - European Road Safety Charter - representative of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

2002 – 2010 - Permanent International Association of Road Congress (PIARC) - National Technical Committee C.4.2 " Road/Vehicle Interaction"

Member of EDITORIAL BOARD

Transportation Research Record (Handling Editor)

Archives of Transportation – Polish Academy of Sciences

International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology

Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering

ACTIVITY IN INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CENTERS

visiting professor

1999 - Transportation Engineering Group and Transport Operations Research Group - University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK).

2004 - Departamento de Transportes Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (ES)

2009 - Brno University of Technology (CZ)

2014 - Cracow University of Technology (PL)

2016 - Szechenyi Istvan University (HU)

2016 – present “Joint International Research Laboratory of Transportation Safety”, School of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University

2019  Universidad Nacional de San Juan

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

From 1987 he is author of more than 200 publications mainly in International journals and International conferences.