Professor, students contribute to traffic safety software

by GABRIELLE PRUITT student writer

The blue lights show up in the rearview mirror, the siren wails, and the tension sets in with the frantic scrambling to find paperwork. Being pulled over by a police officer is not most people’s favorite experience, but Dr. Dana Steil has been doing research to help the policemen’s process go much smoother.

Steil, of Harding’s computer science department, recently earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama, conducting his dissertation research on the use of police patrol routing to target crash “hot spots,” involving identification of segments of highway that have a high frequency of crashes.

Steil then worked to create complimentary patrol coverage that was not just with individual officers to cover each “hot spot.” By utilizing a small programming language that he helped develop, the program would help define police patrol routes and then evaluate the actions that take place along those routes for patrol flexibility. He worked closely with the Center for Advanced Public Safety at the University of Alabama to assist in the implementation of a completely paperless electronic crash reporting system.

Returning to Harding, Steil brought this research with him and continued working on the program full time with six students in the computer science department.They wrote software for police officers and administrative offices

QUAKES: Recent local seismic activity explored

CONTINUED FROM

PG. 1A

“From what I have read and heard, additional earthquakes are certainly possible, but predicting when the next earthquake will come or how powerful it will be is not possible,” Russell said. “Because of this, we concentrate on what to do during and immediately following an earthquake.”

Safety tips include staying inside a building until shaking stops, dropping to the ground and taking cover under a desk, table or interior doorway to protect one’s body from falling debris and staying away from glass, windows, outside doors and walls, and falling debris. of the courts for a variety of purposes: background checks for people whom the officers pull over, traffic safety analysis and crash data analysis. This is where the term HUB-CAPS came from – Harding University Branch of the Center for Advanced Public Safety.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a majority of earthquake-related injuries happen when people try to move within a building or leave a building while the ground is still shaking.

More safety tips can be found at www.fema.gov/ hazard/earthquake.

Russell said Harding has detailed plans for safety administration should an earthquake or other natural disaster hit. The earthquake disaster drill is scheduled for the end of March.

Steil and his group have written software that shares data between agencies and court systems as well as software that officers use to write citations and complete crash forms electronically. This is done through a Web portal called Law Enforcement Tactical System (developed by CAPS) leading to the state database.

Steil’s team is in charge of the major data collection and tools for data analysis through programs like Mobile Officer Virtual Environment (also developed by CAPS).

This helped officers examine specific aspects of citations, looking at genders, frequencies along certain highways, trends for when traffic crashes occur and categories of citations, for example, DUI and speeding. The same analysis can be conducted for crashes, crime reports, overweight trucks or other types of law enforcement and highway safety issues. A lot of the work done incorporates Geographic Information Systems. Steil and his team plotted events on maps and looked for spatial and geographical trends as to where instances occur.

Students work for Steil 20 hours each week, assisting in the development of this project. One student, senior computer science major Paul Sherrod, designs and builds various tools for use by the Alabama

Department of Public Safety and other government agencies. Such tools he creates include the heat maps showing the distribution of citations given across the state and the Web services.

“The work has been very interesting and challenging,” Sherrod said. “[It] has been great experience for what work will be like once we graduate.”

Weston Castleberg helps as a CAPS programmer; he described his tasks as building and maintaining Web services and Web portals needed to access the databases.

“I create databases and convert them into formats usable by our analysis engine,” Castleberg said.

Of the wide variety of computer science research, Steil said he preferred doing software development and what he described as “getting tools in people’s hands,” which he knew the CAPS director in Alabama, Allen Parrish, would help him do. With this type of program, the students learn about organization and putting their concepts into action with Web programming. It also requires them to work directly with the Alabama DPS, sending information across the network back and forth within the database in a live scenario.

Interest among groups such as Arkansas State Police and Arkansas Crime Information Center had grown upon Steil’s return to the state, so he has begun developing the same software used for the Alabama DPS here in hopes to have it ready for use sometime this year.

WEBSITE: Burks shares rationale for blocking e-zine

CONTINUED FROM PG.1A

Senior political science major Sarah Everett, who signed the petition Wednesday night, said censoring the site prevents discussion about how Christians should view same-sex attraction.

“Christ listened to the marginalized, the outcast, and had nothing but compassion for them,” Everett said. “The writers of this publication don’t feel safe speaking their minds and hearts publicly. This is a failure of the institution.”

Section 12, pg. 36, of the Student Handbook, states that any literature displayed or distributed on university-controlled property must be approved by the Office of Student Life, cannot be libelous or obscene and must state the name of the sponsoring organization.

Burks said it is important for students to know that the site was blocked due to its violation of Harding’s handbook and purpose.

“I think it is important for you to know that we are not trying to control your thinking on this,” Burks said. “But it was important for us to block the website because of what it says about Harding, who we are and what we believe.”

Burks added that he also found the site objectionable. “I personally found the website to be offensive and degrading,” Burks said. “I won’t even publicly speak the web address, not because I think I can keep it from you, but because the address itself is offensive to me. While the postings appear to be sincere and heartfelt, several were vulgar and profane by anyone’s standards, and the rhetoric is often very extreme.”

Sophomore social work major Mindy Gross heard about the situation on Twitter Wednesday afternoon. Gross said that while Harding had justification to block the site according to the handbook, the message detailing the censoring was not clear, leaving the university’s intentions unknown.

“If you’re accessing the Internet through Harding’s network, they control it,” Gross said. “I just feel they didn’t go about it in the best manner. The way that they did it left their intentions ambiguous. If they did it to follow through with the Hard- ing handbook, that’s legitimate; from an outsider’s point of view, it could be seen as censoring them because they disagreed.”

Sophomore broadcast journalism major Grant Harris said he believed Harding was completely justified in censoring the website and that he supported Burks’ announcement.

“He showed that the handbook was not biased toward orientation, gave Biblical reasons for why homosexuality is an issue and presented things in a dignified manner,” Harris said. “He has the rules on his side. No one should be surprised that Harding has a problem with this stuff. I think it was fully within their rights as a private university.”

Burks concluded his address by citing his biblical views on the matter, responding to the website’s use of scriptural context to support homosexuality.

“I want to reaffirm that I believe that the Bible teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful — see Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6,”Burks said.“What is acceptable and holy in the sight of God is not determined by the societal norms or democratic voting.”