Day 42: July 31, 2013

Today was the last day working in B118. I spent the entire day organizing files and working on the M Project. I stayed until 9 pm working on it because there was still a lot to do. 

I must say that I have had an amazing experience here as part of RailTEC. I have really enjoyed working and learning from all the graduates students. I hope I can soon be a part of all of this, maybe as a graduate student myself.

Thank you so much to everyone that helped me. Especially to Xiang, Jesus, Chen-yu and Rapik and to the rest of undergrads: Jeff, Hanna and Eli. It has been a pleasure working with all of you.

Keep up with the hard work! and have a great summer.

Hasta pronto amigos!

P.S. I will continue working from Spain for the next couple of days until the M project is done.

Day 41: July 30, 2013

Today I spent most of the day working on the Canadian accident module. By the end of the day I had finished it and I started to work on the M project as Xiang asked me to help them. I think tomorrow I will continue with this task as there is still a lot to do. 

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                              (finished)

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder                              (to be finished)

-Work on the M project automatization tool                                        (to be finished)

*-Work on the M project                                                                    (to be finished)

Next day:

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

-Start to work on the M project automatization tool

-Work on the M project

Day 40: July 29, 2013

Today I started the day working on the Canadian accident module. I spent most of the morning reading articles about it and working on the ppt. The module is almost done. I only have to include a couple of slides to give an overview about the repercusions of the accident and the new regulations/recommendations that the different canadian administrations have approved. I plan on finishing this module tomorrow. 

On the afternoon I finished organizing all the M project ArcMap files and I started to read about AutoIt script, a programming tool that I may be able to use to automatize the calculations in excel of the the M project. Tomorrow, I will further look into the feasibility of using this tool.

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                              (to be finished)

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder                              (to be finished)

*-Start to work on the M project automatization tool                            (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

-Start to work on the M project automatization tool

Day 39: July 26, 2013

I spent most of the day reviewing my ppt modules. Among other improvements, I included all the comments that I received in the presentation on Thursday. 

On the afternoon I organized all my files on the server, making sure that everything can be easily find and accessed. On Monday I will continue with this task as especially the ArcMap files are requiring more time that I had expected. 

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                               (to be finished)

-Review my presentation considering the different comments                  (done)

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder                               (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

Day 38: July 25, 2013

I began the morning working with the rest of the interns on the review of the safety meeting presentations. At 11:00 am we had the meeting. It was a very interesting meeting as we began discussing the spanish high speed accident that had just happened. After that, Hannah, Eli and I gave our presentations. We obtained plenty of helpful and constructive feedback and comments to improve our work. On the overall I was happy with the presentation. 

On the afternoon I started to organize all the files. I want to make sure that every file has a proper name and that my work is accesible to anyone in the future. I will work with the other interns to have the "Summer Team" folder well organized.

I stoped this work to help Xiaonan with the M project as it needed to be delivered by Friday. I spent most of the night working on the ArcMap part of the project, developing the necessary maps. 

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                        (no time)          

-Review the presentation with the other interns                             (done)

-Attend the Safety Group meeting                                                (done)

-Present my analysis on the Safety Group meeting                           (done)

-Work on the M project                                                              (done)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Review my presentation considering the different comments

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

Day 37: July 24, 2013

I spent the day preparing the presentation for the safety group meeting. Although I wanted to include some slides to justify and explain all the assumptions and hypothesis of my analysis I could not do so,  in order to keep the presentation under 25 slides. Later I met with Chen-Yu that had reviewed my 4th module: "Case study" and that had some very helpful comments. I have to say that he has been a great help! 

On the afternoon the rest of the interns and I reviewed our presentations for tomorrow. It was helpful because we all provide suggestions to each other's presentations.

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                             (to be finished)

-Prepare the presentation for the safety group meeting        (done)

-Review the presentation with the other interns                   (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Review the presentation with the other interns

-Attend the Safety Group meeting

-Present my analysis on the Safety Group meeting

Day 36: July 23, 2013

Today I spent most of the day reading news articles from different sources about the Lac-Mégantic accident. I found that a good source of information is wikipedia. It is hard to find detailed information because most of the search results are always articles with repeated, old or inaccurate information. I found a good source of pictures here. FIG14 shows an aerial view of Lac-Mégantic's downtown area after the derailment. 

I think that it is essential to learn from this event as much as possible to guarantee that such accidents don´t happen again. I plan on finishing this module tomorrow.

FIG14: Aerial view of Lac-Mégantic's downtown are after the accident.

Today:

-Start the Canadian accident module                                                    (to be finished)

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting (Brent Williams' presentation)     (done)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Prepare the presentation for the safety group meeting

-Review the presentation with the other interns