PhD Position in Infrastructure Intervention Effectiveness Analysis for Road Safety

The Chair of Infrastructure Management, led by Professor Dr. Bryan T. Adey within the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering, has an opening for a PhD student. This position focuses on developing intervention effectiveness analysis methodologies to support urban road safety as a part of a larger EU project.

The new EU Horizon project advances safe active mobility uptake and research by introducing a human-centred, evidence-based approach that integrates actual and perceived safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and micromobility users. Moving beyond conventional crash-focused approaches, it captures near-misses, dynamic interactions, and embodied safety experiences that shape behaviour and mode choice. The project combines multi-source traffic, infrastructure, vehicle, and health data with immersive eXtended Reality (XR) experimentation and explainable Artificial Intelligence to analyse safety-critical situations that are rare, underreported, or ethically impossible to observe in real traffic. Explainable AI ensures transparency and interpretability, supporting trust, transferability, and policy relevance. The project translates these insights into harmonised assessment methodologies, predictive models, and validated indicators, enabling robust evaluation and comparison of regulatory, infrastructural, technological, and behavioural interventions across Safe System Approach stakeholders. Special focus is placed on interactions between users with differing masses and speeds, including e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, and e-scooters, for both personal mobility and urban logistics. Large-scale pilots in four European cities validate methods in real traffic, support cross-city learning, and ensure applicability under diverse safety, infrastructure and cultural conditions. Implemented by a multidisciplinary consortium bridging engineering, behavioural science, XR, AI, urban planning, and policy, the project delivers actionable, standardised guidance that accelerates safer, more inclusive active and micromobility systems across Europe.

Planning safe urban transport systems is inherently complex: interventions last for decades, have widespread impacts, require significant investment, must fit within constrained urban spaces, and must satisfy ever-changing, diverse user needs. Modern data collection and analysis methods are well-suited to capture these complexities by utilizing high-resolution data (e.g., high-frequency measurements from on-board vehicle sensors and computer-vision imagery) to provide near real-time insights. However, it is not yet clear how to effectively operationalize this data to identify high-risk areas, propose targeted infrastructure interventions, and measure their success - largely due to the relative novelty of these data sources, rapid vehicle advancements, and evolving urban mobility patterns.

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ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. We are renowned for our excellent education, cutting-edge fundamental research and direct transfer of new knowledge into society. Over 30,000 people from more than 120 countries find our university to be a place that promotes independent thinking and an environment that inspires excellence. Located in the heart of Europe, yet forging connections all over the world, we work together to develop solutions for the global challenges of today and tomorrow.