Student Engineering Team Wins Award at 2019 Washington GIS Conference

At the 2019 Washington GIS Conference, the Seattle University Sound Transit team competed and won second place in the Dick Thomas Award. The team is comprised of civil and electrical engineering students, and they worked on an Interactive Noise Map Application (INMA) for Customer Access to Light Rail Noise Data.

The students on the team are Abdulrahman Alsammahi (ECE), Raghad Ashoor (CE), Don Dang (ECE), Emily Graham (CE), Kirsten Hooper (CE), and their Sound Transit sponsors are Craig DeLalla, PE and Shankar Rajaram, PhD.

Because noise from new train projects is a concern for communities residing along Sound Transit’s future Link extension alignments, Sound Transit requested that the team design a web application displaying Link Light Rail project noise information in a format that is easily accessible to communities. As a pilot project, INT 19.2 created a map of the Lynnwood Link Expansion project displaying noise data in a clear and intuitive format and built a website to display noise data from a web address that will be accessible using smartphones, tablets or computers.

The map has an interactive feature that will allow community members to search for their individual home or business address and get detailed noise information specific to their location. This feature improves the efficiency of accessing noise information for community members and Sound Transit staff. The website that the team is providing Sound Transit is also scalable for other Link Light Rail projects to insert new noise data into a database, which will then update the noise map. The team provided Sound Transit with the designed website, a detailed technical report of the chosen design approach and a user manual for future updates and improvements.