Salvatore CAFISO
Full professor ICAR04 – Road, Rail and Airport Infrastructures
Dept. Civil Engineering and Architecture – University of Catania
Teaching responsibilities
• “Highway Geometric design”, Msc in Transportation Engineering, University of Catania
• “Pavement Engineering”, Msc in Transportation Engineering, University of Catania
Research responsibilities
2012 – 2019 : Research coordinator Road Laboratory for Material testing and Road Monitoring
2019-present: Founder and Scientific coordinator University Spin Off “Infrastructure Transport Engineering Research” (ITER)
Univ. of Catania Delegate and regional coordinator of the “Smart Cities & Communities” S3 Sicilian Region
2002-2013 Head of PhD course "Engineering of transport infrastructures" for the Universities of Catania and Messina
2012 – 2017: Delegate for International Relations
1991-present Coordination and Participation in Research projects
research and teaching activities involve highway geometric design, pavement engineering and road asset management with special focus on highways safety addressing the needs of all facility users (drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists) and of automated vehicles. He has been successful in securing research funds in these areas from local, national and international agencies.
Relevant RESEARCH PROJECTS (last 3 years)
- 2020 SAFE-DEMON: SAFE Driving by E-health MONitoring. P.O. FESR Sicilia
- 2020 EuroS@P : European Road Safety Partnership. EU KA203
- 2021 InfRO@D: European Digital Education in Road Infrastructure Management”. EU+ Strategic Partnerships in response to the COVID-19 situation
- 2022 National Center for High Performance Computing- Spoke 9 – Digital Society & Smart Cities – WP 5 Mobility
- 2022 “SAMOTHRACE - SiciliAn MicronanOTecH Research And Innovation CEnter” – Innovation EcoSystem - Spoke 1 –WP 3 - ICT technologies for the safety and energy efficiency of electrical, connected, autonomous vehicles
- 2023 Erasmus EU KA203 “ EuroS@P : European Road Safety Partnership”
- 2023 Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) - National relevant projects (PRIN 2022) “Smart Road for Smart Drivers toward Smart Vehicles (Smart RoDriVe)
SCIENTIFIC AWARDS
1997 Best paper safety awarded by International Road Federation XIII world Meeting: “Statistical Analysis of Accidents on Italian Highways”
2004 Best Paper in poster session awarded by SIIV II International Congress: “in Field Data Collection for Driving Behavior using DIVAS Instrumented Car”
2015 Best paper awarded Transportation Safety Management committee, Transportation Research Board “Reliability Based Assessment of Benefits in Roadway Safety Management”
2021 Best Paper Awarded by International Symposium on Accident Analysis & Prevention: “Safety effectiveness and performance of lane support systems for driving assistance and automation – Experimental test and logistic regression for rare events”
2023 Best paper presentation 35th ICTCT conference (A. Borsos, S. Cafiso, G. Pappalardo “Transferability of safety inspection procedure for network wide risk assessment of two lane rural roads. - An Italian-Hungarian experiment)
2024 Deborah Freund paper award – Transportation Research Board “Truck and Bus Safety Committee”, (X. Wang, Y. Zhou, S. Cafiso “Autonomous Emergency Braking System for Trucks in Longitudinal Scenarios of Collision Avoidance with Two-wheeler”).
MEMBERSHIP IN SCIENTIFIC BOARD
US Transportation Research Board - Transportation Safety Management Systems (ACS10), Performance Effects of Geometric Design (AKD10) Committee
US Transportation Research Board - International Symposium on Highway Geometric Design
Permanent International Association of Road Congress (PIARC) - National Technical Committee C.3.2 " Design and Management of safer roads" - C.2.4 " Road Network Operation - ITS" - TC B5 " Connected Automated Driving"
Member of EDITORIAL BOARD: Transportation Research Record (Handling Editor); Archives of Transportation – Polish Academy of Sciences; International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology
SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS (ORCID ID 0000-0002-7247-0365)
author of more than 200 publications in peer-reviewed International journals and conferences.
Metrix (Scopus. Author ID 56962748800): Publications: 104 – Citation: 1797 – Hindex: 24 (12/24)
Author of over 200 scientific articles in international journals and conference proceedings
The main research areas are:
Road Safety in relation to geometric and functional design: Statistical models for crash prediction
Safety inspections for the risk assessment of existing roads
Safety of Vulnerable users (pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists) with traffic conflict techniques
Monitoring of road users (driver, motorcyclist, bicyclist) behavior through naturalistic and in field studies
Physical infrastructure and operating design domain for automatic driving
Monitoring and maintenance systems of transport infrastructure
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: 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
- 2020 EuroS@P : European Road Safety Partnership. EU KA203 - KA203 - Strategic Partnerships for higher education
- 2021 InfRO@D: European Digital Education in Road Infrastructure Management”. EU+ Strategic Partnerships in response to the COVID-19 situation