Talha and I will be representing our research group at AAG this year in San Francisco!

Here is a roundup of research our group is presenting on:

3/17: Transportation Equity and Disaster Resilience: A Scoping Review (Sarah presenting)

3/18: Health, Transit, and Evacuation in the 2025 Eaton and Palisades Wildfires (Ryan Miller, Cal Poly presenting)

3/19: Displacement and Mobility Justice: How Transportation and Housing Shape Equitable Flood Recovery (Talha Quddoos presenting)

3/19: Transport Insecurity in the 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires: Applying the Transportation Insecurity Index (TSI) in the Disaster Context (Tara Goddard, Cal Poly presenting)

3/20: Understanding Evacuation Dynamics through Diverse Mobility Datasets: Lessons from the Eaton and Palisades Fires (Gretchen Bella, U Maryland presenting).

I’m excited to share that my co-authored article, “Barriers to Electric Vehicle Home Charging and Impacts on Adoption”, has been published in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. Highlights of this work include:

•EV home charger installation is more costly in rentals and homes that need upgrades.

•People living in rental homes are one third to one half less likely to adopt a BEV.

•Homes that lack parking are less likely to have a BEV and more likely to have a PHEV.

•These effects are present when controlling for home value and vehicle preferences.

•Expanding access to EVs will require overcoming barriers to home charging.

Read the full article here.

Pezeshknejad, P., Damon, L., Grajdura, S., & Rowangould, D. (2026). Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2026.105262

I am starting as a Handling Editor at TRR. I am excited to learn about this journal and help make it better :) Read more here.

Good news- I was selected as a Fellow in the National Science Foundation’s Enabling Program, a competitive initiative supporting early-career scholars working in hazards, disasters, and risk. The program provides mentorship from senior researchers, proposal development support, and a collaborative cohort of interdisciplinary scholars.

Enabling directly supports my goal of advancing equitable disaster science—research that examines how transportation systems shape safety, displacement, and recovery during wildfires and floods. The fellowship strengthens my ability to frame infrastructure resilience within broader hazards scholarship while building national collaborations that bridge engineering, public health, and social science. It also supports my development as a research leader committed to mentoring students and contributing to a collaborative and inclusive hazards research community. Read more about the program here.

The Pacific Coast Transportation Workshop was a wonderful and small conference, hosted by UCLA ITS. I shared findings from ongoing research on wildfire evacuation dynamics during the 2025 Los Angeles fires. The presentation examined how congestion cascades and stalled vehicles can undermine safe evacuation, emphasizing the interdependence between human behavior, roadway infrastructure, and emergency response systems. This work contributes to a broader research program focused on infrastructure resilience under compound climate risks. Read more about the workshop here.

We’re excited to share that our wildfire evacuation research was featured by LAist, highlighting how transit-dependent Angelenos navigated evacuation during the January 2025 fires. The article “How did LA transit riders evacuate from the fires?” dives into survey and interview data showing that many transit riders relied heavily on rides from friends, family, or ride-share services — and in some cases walked to safety — because transit options were limited during the emergency.

Our own Maddie Brozen was interviewed for the story, offering insights into the study’s key takeaways, including the critical importance of advance evacuation planning for transit riders.

Read the full LAist piece here: How did LA transit riders evacuate from the fires?

Starting Fall 2025, Seth Beddes and Bronson Bradshaw joined the research group.

Bronson is contributing to an ASPIRE-supported project examining the relationship between political ideology and electric vehicle adoption. Seth is working on an ASPIRE project focused on EV charging station resilience, exploring how charging infrastructure can better withstand and recover from disruptions.

We are excited to have them on the team!

I presented our scoping review, “Transportation Equity and Disaster Resilience,” (preprint here) at the Crossroads Transportation Equity & Justice Convening. The session, moderated by Alyssa Ryan, focused on building healthy transportation systems and examined how climate-related hazards intersect with mobility inequities. Our presentation synthesized decades of research on transportation equity and natural hazards, highlighting patterns in exposure, recovery, and adaptation across wildfire, flood, and extreme weather contexts. It was an honor to share the session with colleagues Greg Rowangould, Stephen Wong, Clare Nelson, and Matthew Bhagat-Conway.

You can view the full program here:
https://sites.google.com/view/crossroads-convening/program?authuser=0

For this year’s GIS Day (November 19), the Geospatial Collective at Utah State University hosted a campus-wide poster competition for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their geospatial research and compete for prizes.

Dawson Tree presented his poster, “Identifying Abandoned Vehicles in Wildfire Evacuations,” which uses vehicle sensor data from the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires to detect and map patterns of roadway abandonment during fast-moving evacuation events. The project highlights how emerging mobility datasets can support evacuation planning and infrastructure resilience. Shout out to Cat Edgeley (pictured) for engaging discussions at the poster session!

Talha Quddoos also presented his research on EV charging infrastructure in Utah’s wildland–urban interface, examining how charging access intersects with wildfire risk and evacuation needs.

Talha Quddoos recently completed the Equity and Justice course through the Oxford Leadership Programme’s Global Challenges in Transport initiative (Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford). The program explored transportation as a deeply social system, emphasizing power, history, and uneven territorial outcomes in shaping mobility access and decision-making.

Through justice-oriented frameworks and international collaboration, Talha engaged with peers from across Latin America and beyond to examine how transportation systems can better serve marginalized communities.

Talha Quddoos presented our research, “EV Adoption and Charging Infrastructure in Wildfire-prone Utah,” at the 2025 ASPIRE Annual Meeting & Technology Showcase. The project examines how electric vehicle adoption and charging access intersect with wildfire risk in Utah’s wildland–urban interface.

His presentation highlighted spatial patterns in EV charging infrastructure and discussed implications for evacuation planning and resilient electrified transportation systems. It was a strong opportunity to share our work with ASPIRE partners and industry collaborators while advancing research at the intersection of electrification and hazard resilience.

I attended the 2025 Utah Transportation Conference with students from my research group, giving them the opportunity to engage directly with transportation leaders and practitioners from across the state.

A highlight was hearing both the Mayor of Salt Lake City and the Governor of Utah speak about the importance of strengthening transit and regional mobility systems in preparation for Utah’s future Olympic Games. Their remarks emphasized long-term investment, coordination, and infrastructure readiness as central to the state’s transportation future.

I presented “Where Wildfire Evacuees Abandon Their Cars and What it Says About Our Road Network” at the 2025 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Annual Conference, in October 2025.

This research examines patterns of vehicle abandonment during fast-moving wildfire evacuations and what those patterns reveal about roadway design, network bottlenecks, and evacuation system vulnerabilities. Drawing on emerging data from the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the study highlights how congestion dynamics and infrastructure constraints can undermine protective action, even when households attempt to evacuate early.

ACSP provided a valuable interdisciplinary forum to engage planners and transportation scholars on how evacuation planning, land use, and network design intersect during extreme events. I am grateful for the thoughtful feedback and discussions that will help advance this work.

In June, several colleagues and I presented preliminary findings from our study of transit riders’ health and mobility experiences during the 2025 Palisades and Eaton wildfires. The project examines how transit-dependent residents navigated evacuation orders, service disruptions, and smoke exposure during rapidly evolving emergency conditions.

We convened a stakeholder workshop and briefed the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office, LA Metro, LA DOT emergency management, SCAG, Waymo, and other regional partners to translate early findings into actionable insights for evacuation planning and public health protection. This work was supported by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and funded through grants from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the Natural Hazards Center. Shoutout to Maddie Brozen, Sang-O Kim, Matt Palm, Ryan Miller, and Amy Lee pictured.

In June, I presented research at MR2025, hosted by the Columbia Climate School and the Global Centre for Climate Mobility. My presentation examined the connections between disaster displacement, transportation access, and short-term wellbeing following the 2023 Vermont floods.

Drawing on a unique post-disaster survey and interview dataset—developed in partnership with a community advisory committee of federal, state, and local stakeholders—the study evaluates how relocation interacts with transportation access, housing quality, food access, community connection, safety, and mental health. The findings highlight how mobility systems shape recovery trajectories for displaced households and provide evidence to inform disaster recovery and climate adaptation planning.

In Summer 2025 our team was awarded a National Science Foundation RAPID grant (Award #2525484) to conduct urgent data collection on roadway vehicle abandonment during fast-moving wildfire evacuations in the Los Angeles area. This project collects time-sensitive data—including interviews and other ephemeral observations—to understand how and why evacuees abandon vehicles under extreme urgency and how these behaviors interact with emergency response and traffic dynamics. The insights will improve evacuation planning, inform traffic management under high-stress conditions, and contribute to safer wildfire evacuation strategies in auto-dependent urban regions.

As of April 2025, I serve as an Associate Editor for Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives (TRIP). In this role, I support the review and development of scholarship that bridges engineering, social science, and planning to advance transportation research across disciplines. Learn more about TRIP →

This spring I attended the Utah Conference on Community Engagement at USU Eastern in Price. The conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and community leaders from across the state to share approaches to meaningful, place-based collaboration. It was inspiring to learn about community-driven initiatives throughout Utah, as well as the mining history and regional context of Price, Utah.

In May I attended my first American Planning Association (APA) Utah Conference in Logan. The event provided valuable insight into planning challenges currently shaping Utah communities, including water scarcity, housing growth, and long-term resilience. One presentation that stood out examined farmers’ perspectives on water use amid rapid development and the ongoing decline of the Great Salt Lake. The conference offered a thoughtful space to engage with planners working at the intersection of infrastructure, land use, and environmental change.

The transportation faculty hosted an end of year bbq and potluck for the transportation undergrad and grad students from the engineering and planning departments. It was a lot of fun!