Sharaf Alkheder

Kuwait University | KU · Department of Civil Engineering

Transportation systems support economic activity by facilitating the mobility of people and goods. The main weather-related impact on the transportation industry is flooding, particularly due to heavy rainstorms. Therefore, considering the flooding in Kuwait that occurred in November 2018, this research aims to identify the effect of the floods on...

There is a lack of research that discusses the influence of sleep, fatigue, and tiredness on Bus drivers. The main aim of this research is to determine the impact of driving weariness and sleepiness on bus drivers and to identify the most effective predictor for the contributory factors to sleepiness related to Kuwait’s bus drivers. The abnormal dr...

In some cases, a one-minute of delay due to traffic congestion may cause a life loss. Traffic congestion is a consequence of the increase in vehicle users, which increases travel time for road users. Ambulance drives are supposed to transfer patients from their locations to the closest hospital with minimum time to save their lives. However, they a...

Roundabouts have been viewed as a powerful movement control technique under a particular activity conditions for quite a long time. Single-path roundabouts, the most well-known compose, have just eight potential conflict points. Automobiles are enforced to decrease speeds because of the geometric of the roundabouts. If the roundabouts were designed...

Purpose Megaproject's construction is essential for the development and economic growth of any country, especially in the developing world. In Kuwait, megaprojects are facing many restrictions that discourage their execution causing a significant delay in bidding, design, construction and operation phases with the execution quality being affected....

Road traffic accidents are a major world health issue that exhausts the financial status of countries and threatens millions of lives every day. In this work a five-and-a-half-year period data from Abu Dhabi, UAE was obtained and categorized. Random Parameter logit model-that assessed the unobserved heterogeneity of risk factors-was used with four...

The current work presented a comparative analysis of traffic demand and safety skills before and after control measures during the COVID-19 epidemic, acquired time-series change data curves, and constructed a prediction model after determining the trend of traffic demand over time. From a data analysis perspective, the paper draws some interesting...

In the Gulf region, the issue of road accidents and traffic safety is prevalent, which demands prerequisite progress in the field of safety. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries had obtained high rates of severe Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) in relative to other high-income countries. Therefore, there is a need for more in-depth research to unde...

Although transportation systems are an increasing necessity in today’s connected world, the over-reliance on internal combustion engine vehicles has caused an increase in air and noise pollution. Air and noise pollutions are among the negative environmental factors that contribute to disease occurrence due to their negative health consequences. Lit...

Purpose This study aims to validate a model for estimating platoon delay due to pedestrian crossing for use in Kuwait City. Design/methodology/approach The model was modified slightly for the scenario used in Kuwait, in which the presence of raised crosswalk meant that all incoming traffic would slow down automatically. Using video footage to obse...

The article presented data analysis to address the challenge of reducing noise occurrence in the case of neighbourhoods that are close to the airport. A data analytic approach to this challenge is novel and makes contributions in the aspect of future aerospace sciences. This paper studied the noise exposure level of Kuwait International Airport (KI...

COVID-19 is one of the most important dilemmas that took place during the last few years. Logisticians worked hard to present a new mechanism called Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs) by which they afford help making life easier for people during pandemic while trying to reduce pollution on road as well. This work mainly aimed to explore Unified T...

The rising number of traffic accidents and their considerable risk that contributed to fatal traumatic injuries is a global matter. In this work, 5740 traffic accidents reports were collected from Abu Dhabi, UAE (United Arab Emirates) traffic police department and then analyzed to identify the most significant risk factors associated with the high...

The corona virus disease pandemic (COVID-19) is one of the recent issues that spread in the world, which disrupted life, impacted the economy, and led to heavy losses, whether for government sectors or private companies. This paper focuses on the Kuwait public transport company KPTC and Kuwait Airways’ experience during the pandemic, since they inc...

Measuring the risks of transporting hazardous materials on the surrounding environment in Kuwait is the crucial purpose for this paper. Dangerous Goods Routing Algorithm (DGRA) was adopted and developed to be used for the data of State of Kuwait. All risks and algorithms were examined and reshaped in accordance with law and regulation of Kuwait. So...

Traffic accidents had caused severe consequences for different road users worldwide. Several risk factors were attributed to traffic accidents occurrence. This study provided an overview of the weather effect on three selected traffic accident types; hitting pedestrians, accidents due to vehicle defects, and other types of crashes. The study was co...

The mortality and severe injuries due to traffic accidents in United Arab Emirates (UAE) are hastening the necessity for a study that can identify the consequential risk factors. This study was conducted by utilizing a 5740 traffic accidents police reports that occurred in Abu Dhabi, UAE between 2008 and 2013. A multinomial logit regression model w...

The aim of this study was to examine what factors worried people as pedestrians in Kuwait. It aimed also to assess the correlation between perceived risk and worry and between worry and walking frequencies. The focus of this study was on urban college pedestrians as one of the most vulnerable population groups that suffered recently from many safet...

The second largest share of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions is generated by electricity production. Approximately 63% of the generated electricity is from burning fossil fuels. Currently, The Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) owns and operates 8 power plants to secure the demand for electricity in Kuwait. Burning more fuel to generate electric...

In Kuwait, the transport sector is facing a daily traffic congestion pandemic. The traffic congestion is significantly influencing the economy and obstructing the development and production in the country. Extreme weather conditions also affect the roads’ traffic, causing considerable hazards to the transportation system. Precipitation, temperature...

Port systems are sensitive and complicated, yet they are subject to various forms of disruptiveness. Therefore, during the port life cycle, the port can be exposed to unexpected crises that include economic meltdowns, inappropriate designs, and the unavailability of resources. Scenario-based preference modeling was designed to define the nature of...

Purpose This paper aimed to study the optimal way to implement and subsequently manage the new metropolitan lines in the Kuwait city as well as to justify them from a social and economic-financial viability standpoint and the most important aspects of transport infrastructure projects viability. The implementation of new modes of transport in an ur...

Maritime transport is the second source of income in Kuwait. The unorganized mechanism of truck traffic flow had caused severe congestion and increased the waiting time of containers transporting trucks both inside and outside the port. Also, the insufficiency of the container storage area had contributed to the reduction in the ship traffic and th...

Potholes are one of the most common road distresses in Kuwait especially after winter season in 2018. Pavement deterioration rate significantly increases as the pavement exposes to moisture. Paving road requires using high-quality materials. This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of using recycled asphalt pavement in hot mix asphalt (HMA) d...

This study sheds light on pedestrian and driver's behavior towards crossing in Kuwait. It examined the effect of different factors on pedestrian and vehicle violations at 10 locations in Kuwait including signalized, nonsignalized intersections, locations with/without pedestrian's bridge, and locations with/without pedestrian crossing signals. Four...

Airports are a high complex type of projects that are exposed to many disruptiveness. Proper management between airport expansion projects and airport operations is needed to ensure safety and efficiency of the project and the aviation. Scenario-based preference modeling is one of the robustness analysis techniques that describes the influence of d...

Background: Road Safety has become a worldwide concern due to the alarming repercussions road accidents may bear. This study examined the relationship between different geometric design elements and the accident rates on Rashid Bin Saeed Street, Arabian Gulf Street, and Sultan Bin Zayed Street in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Methods: The geomet...

Public transit (PT) has a positive impact on social and environment development in any society. This paper was carried out to analyze the role of GIS in utilizing destination identification as a way to help accomplish a sustainable landscape. The work focused on enhancing work availability considering the transport network. Areas with a higher offe...

Road traffic accidents represent a serious problem all over the world, causing several losses in many ways. The situation in United Arab Emirates (UAE) is not an exception. Therefore, this paper was developed providing a frequencies analysis for accidents data within five successive years on Abu Dhabi roads. Markov modeling was used to find the tra...

The expansion of the air transportation field has prompted significant air traffic congestion around the world. The management of airport demand intends to moderate air traffic congestion by restricting the uneven aspects among demand and capacity at occupied airport terminals through managerial measures (e.g., slot controls) or financial motivatin...

There is no doubt that traffic noise level is considered a harmful environmental pollution that has a serious impact on human quality of life. This paper shines a light on the traffic noise level in the Arabian Gulf region. More specifically, it predicts the traffic noise level on a ring road in Kuwait by using an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference sys...

Purpose Airport construction is extremely different than the construction of any other transport infrastructure. It is a vital area affecting both the environment and the economy. Therefore, sustainable selection of building materials represents a very important step. The main objective of this paper was to develop a set of sustainable assessment c...

The massive amount of solid waste, especially used tires, is one of the most problematic environmental issues facing Kuwait recently. This has caused a rapid increase in the environmental pollution levels. Furthermore, Kuwait’s road network showed a weak performance against traffic loads and climatic changes recently causing the appearance of sever...

Smart pavement management system uses the up-to-date technology to get the better results in terms of cost, time, and quality. This work started with collecting data using a new smart phone application and ended up with analyzing and reporting data using a geographic information system (GIS) environment. GIS was used to report pavement data based o...

Undoubtedly, one of the greatest issues nowadays is congestion. To face such problem, forecasting of traffic is required. Bayesian combined neural network (BCNN) is applied to four different locations in Kuwait (Cairo Street, Riyadh Street, Maghreb Road and Istiqlal Road) to predict the short-term traffic volume at the middle section due to traffic...

Traffic collisions are considered a serious problem worldwide that cause severe losses. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries have high rates of collisions, which requires urgent proactive strategies and attention to solve such problem. This study aimed to enhance traffic safety conditions and reduce collisions' severity levels at several locati...

Traffic congestion is one of the most important problems that faces metropolises despite of the measures being taken to mitigate and reduce such problem. Traffic congestion in Kuwait requires a rapid solution, especially in Kuwait City. Public transportation can decrease the number of private vehicles to ease the traffic congestion, provide a good...

Traffic congestion had been the most important and sensitive problem facing Kuwait roads for decades. The objectives of this study were to: optimize the traffic flow on road networks by implementing shared rides, reduce vehicle emissions and minimize the ride cost. The concept concentrated on sharing the journeys starting and ending around the same...

Technical vehicle inspection centers are widespread in Kuwait. All vehicles should pass the test every 2 years if not older than 6 years or every 1 year for other vehicles. This study provided an insight into the data collected from test centers and the emission test utilized in Kuwait. Data were collected from test centers in the six Kuwaiti gover...

The increasing demand for construction materials and the need to improve the performance of asphalt mixes have led to the depletion of available resources of aggregates. Lots of aggregate alternatives had been studied to partially or fully replace aggregate in asphalt concrete mixes. Indeed, date seeds are found easily in Kuwait. Their properties;...

This paper investigated the possibility of applying congestion pricing in order to mitigate the traffic congestion on urban road networks in Kuwait. In order to explore the public support of this idea, a satisfaction study survey had been distributed randomly to road users. Genetic Algorithm (GA) was utilized to design the congestion pricing system...

Traffic accidents are costing the world more than a million lives yearly alongside monetary losses, especially in the Gulf Cooperation Council region. This situation raised the need to examine potential risk factors contributing to traffic accident severities. In this paper, three data mining models were applied to provide a comprehensive analysis...

Unsuitable weather phenomena are considered one of the most influential factors on flight schedules in world airports. It is a well-known fact that it is a non-controllable force that significantly affects airport operations systems and safety performance. In this paper, the impact of dust storms on flight schedules was explored in Kuwait Internati...

Kuwait traffic networks has started to develop in the early 60's. Since it is crucial to determine the parameters that present the local conditions in Kuwait, this study was developed to modify the passenger car equivalent (PCE) values at different signalized intersections in Kuwait and obtain the heavy-vehicle adjustment factor. The headway ratio...

This research aimed to evaluate the roundabout performance in Kuwait and to study drivers' behavior at roundabouts. A questionnaire was designed to obtain the needed information. Also, a field observation was done to link the survey data with the real situation on Kuwait roads. A sample of 804 participated in the survey with the collected data bein...

The continuous congestion in the Arabian Gulf Road, located in Kuwait, contributes to air pollution in the area and causes discomfort for both drivers and pedestrians. The objective of this work is to enhance walkability and safety of pedestrians in the Gulf road while facilitating traffic flow. The study had been conducted for the road and surroun...

In any country, seaports present the window to the world, especially for the state of Kuwait, where the origin and development of this country was explicitly related to the existence of seaports. The strategic location of Kuwait has significantly helped the country to rely heavily on maritime trade for its economy. The main commercial port in Kuwai...

This paper presents a simulation for Hold Baggage Security Screening (HBSS) system at Kuwait International Airport to develop a model to improve the current performance of the system. A well conducted investigation for HBSS system is performed to fully understand and analyze the throughput of the system and the factors affecting the baggage movemen...

Location and time-period can highly be correlated with traffic accidents types. In this study, 287983 traffic accidents that happened in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2017 were collected from General Traffic Department of Kuwait. The collected traffic accidents occurred in four-governorates that included Kuwait-City, Hawally, Al Farwaniya, and Al Ahmadi as...

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) represent a serious problem globally causing losses in many ways. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have a high rate of RTAs compared to other high-income countries. In this study, a Bayesian hierarchical model was utilized for accident counts forecasting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This work will help t...

Transportation is responsible for producing high noise levels that negatively affect people’s life causing critical annoyance and sleep disturbance. Although railways are considered one of the most sustainable transport modes, considerable levels of noise are emitted from railways operation that should be controlled. This paper was developed in ord...

Variable message signs (VMS) installed in Kuwait at different roads’ locations to disseminate different types of information. This paper investigated the factors affecting drivers’ decision to switch the route under different VMS information. Data were collected using a stated preference survey. The survey included variables affecting drivers’ deci...

This study estimated the cost of road crashes in Kuwait for 2012 using human capital method, particularly, gross loss output method. Three cost components were considered: cost of personal loss, cost of vehicle crash and general crash-related cost. The overall cost of road crashes in Kuwait in 2012 reached a value of 789,401,438 KD with a crash cos...

Traffic accidents have been very costly to individuals and societies over long decades, motor vehicle collision may cause serious injuries or even deaths to drivers, passengers, or pedestrians. Vehicle collision also causes car and property damage. However, there are some factors, which contribute more to the risk of car accidents that includes the...

Recently, Kuwait road system is facing many problems in all perspectives. Public bus service was implemented by the time of constructing the road network in Kuwait without considering the future development or growth rates. This work aims to develop the public bus services in terms of time improvement, environment protection, decreasing the process...

Highway traffic control signs are commonly used to regulate, warn, and guide road users. It is widely believed that traffic signs comprehension has a tremendous effect on traffic safety. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between drivers’ personal characteristics and their familiarity/comprehensibility with a...

In this study, The Optimal Number of buses for Kuwait Public Transport Company (KPTC) was determined. Integer linear programing model for the general problem was developed first. A case study where this model was applied to Kuwait Public Transport Company was considered. It is important to mention that the most important five routes were selected u...

Traditional transportation systems' management and operation mainly focused on improving traffic mobility and safety without imposing any environmental concerns. Transportation and environmental issues are interrelated and affected by the same parameters especially at signalized intersections. Additionally, traffic congestion at signalized intersec...

Risk analysis of dangerous goods' routing indemnifies the safety of surrounding environment and population. For such a purpose, a risk/cost based algorithm was adopted to fit the available data of the State of Kuwait. Such algorithm identified the available alternative routes with their rankings for dangerous goods' transportation. Regulations of d...

Oxy-hydrogen (HHO) is a non-toxic gas that is used as a supplement to any engine working on petrol, diesel, heavy oil, acetylene, propane, kerosene, or LPG. Through adding HHO to the air intake manifold engine and injection into the cylinders, where HHO mixes with fuel, an increase in mileage of engine performance; enhancement of hydrocarbon fuel c...

In this study, an attempt was performed to investigate the relation between distracted driving and the rate of discharge. A questionnaire was formed and randomly distributed to 400 persons. Also, observations were conducted to study drivers’ behaviours at signalised intersections and obtain the frequencies of distracted driving. The results of the...

Transportation networks today are witnessing a dramatic increase in traffic volume that emits large amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere. Many environment-friendly technologies are introduced recently to reduce vehicles' emissions. It is possible to obtain a homogeneous fuel–air mixture in the internal combustion engines under ideal conditions...

Many services in Abu Dhabi such as petrol stations are witnessing increasing demand and high congestion levels which adversely affect both service quality and efficiency. To help combat such a situation, this article develops a mobile-based spatial system to solve petrol station problems and to reduce the delays in service. The nearest petrol stati...

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been widely used in predicting the severity of road traffic crashes. All available information about previously occurred accidents is typically used for building a single prediction model (i.e., classifier). Too little attention has been paid to the differences between these accidents, leading, in most cases,...

Jordan is a famous country in terms of olive trees agriculture that resulted in a mass production of olive oil products. The huge amounts of olive waste (husk) that resulted from olives processing to produce olive oil represent an environmental challenge in the country. The idea in this paper comes to use olive waste as a partial replacement for Po...

Car parking is a serious problem in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in general and in United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular. This problem has been associated with the exceptional growth in the number of cars, buses, trucks, and other modes of transportation over the past few decades. In Abu Dhabi (the capital city of UAE), finding a par...

Road traffic accidents are among the leading causes of death and injury worldwide. In Abu Dhabi, in 2014, 971 traffic accidents were recorded, which contributed to 121 fatalities and 135 severe injuries. Several factors contribute to injury severity, including driver-related factors, road-related factors, and accident-related factors. In this paper...

In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) was used to predict the injury severity of traffic accidents based on 5973 traffic accident records occurred in Abu Dhabi over a 6-year period (from 2008 to 2013). For each accident record, 48 different attributes had been collected at the time of the accident. After data preprocessing, the data wer...

United Arab Emirates (UAE) witnessed over the past few decades unprecedented economic growth associating the oil and gas prosperous industry. This fact along with the fast construction process of new road systems and infrastructure services generated heavy traffic volumes resulting in numerous traffic accidents. This work, through using a special s...

The Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering program offered at ALHOSN University was finally accredited by ABET. This paper, firstly and empirically, demonstrates the process of accreditation which includes self-study prior to application of accreditation, major changes required by EAC and further follow-up modifications. This is aiming to share e...

Traffic accidents are a critical safety issue in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), especially in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The economic prosperity over the past few decades associated with excessive growth in population, major highway infrastructure development projects and high levels of car ownership have led to dramatic increase in traff...

Petrol cars, in particular nonhybrid cars, contribute significantly to the pollution problem as compared with other types of cars. The originality of this article falls in the direction of using hydro-oxy gas to reduce pollution from petrol car engines. Experiments were performed in city areas at low real speeds, with constant engine speeds in the...

Large numbers of traffic accidents were experienced on the road networks of Arab Gulf Countries including United Arab Emirates (UAE). This had resulted in enormous loss of lives and economy. This article through using Abu Dhabi city, UAE capital as a case study is aiming to understand the reasons behind such safety problem through analysing a large...

Tourism in Jordan is a major industry that contributes significantly to the national income both from local and international tourism. Transportation is a key element in developing the economy of any country in the world. Transportation advancement plays a crucial role in tourism development and sustainability worldwide and in Jordan. This paper fo...

Former traffic safety studies showed clearly that driver or human factor is a major contributor to road accidents. Hence, to better understand the traffic accident nature it's so vital to analyze all characteristics related to drivers involved in these accidents. This article focuses on this aspect through using a dataset representing UAE traffic a...

This paper presents a methodology for simulating urban growth phenomenon through utilizing remote sensing imagery and neural network (NN) algorithms. Historical satellite images of Indianapolis city, IN were used. All images were rectified and registered to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) NAD83 zone 16N. Supervised classification was used to cl...

An efficient automotive security system is implemented for anti-theft using an embedded system occupied with a Global Positioning System (GPS) and a Global System of Mobile (GSM). The client interacts through this system with vehicles and determines their current locations and status using Google Earth. The user can track the position of targeted v...