Dr. Gord Lovegrove and the SMARTer Growth Team are working hard towards a safer, more sustainable future in three main areas of research which follow the SMARTer Growth Principles:
1. Safe & Sustainable Transportation:
To enhance the safety and sustainability of passenger and cargo transportation through a variety of subjects, explored past and present, in fields from traffic flow and communication, automated modelling and indexes, to hydrogen powered trains.
Current Projects:
Hydrail
Turbo Roundabouts
Interactive High-Level Safety Planning
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2. Affordable Housing and Homelessness
Innovating system-based solutions to the rising costs of housing and living, and to help those who are experiencing homelessness.
Current Projects:
Okanagan Cohousing
Kelowna Homelessness Research Cluster – Technology Node
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3. Sustainable Development Patterns
Leading research to develop reliable, predictive, empirical tools that will quantify these patterns enabling for community decision-makers to better understand and address their challenges. 
Current Projects:
SMARTer Growth Index
UNDRIP Research
……Past Research
1. Sustainable Transport Safety (STS)
The burden on communities due to the enormous economic and social costs associated with road collisions has been recognized worldwide as a major problem and impacts directly on the sustainability of our society (see WHO, 2013). As 96% of collisions are due to driver error, Dr. Lovegrove is pursuing ways to reduce the use of private auto’s as well as evaluate ways to create safer neighbourhoods. He is working on the following areas:
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Sustainable Transportation Safety Evaluation Models
Development of macro-level Collision Prediction Models (CPMs) and guidelines for their use by planners and engineers is a critical need for our community. These models predict mean collision frequency based on associations with variables from one of four neighbourhood characteristic themes, including exposure, socio-demographics (S-D), Transportation Demand Management (TDM), and network. Dr. Lovegrove and his team have developed models for Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna, and Ottawa, in Canada. He is seeking partnerships to develop and apply his models in other cities across Canada, with the intent to plan, design, and build neighbourhoods based on his STS principles to validate his theoretical modelling results.
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Transportation Safety Management Systems
Innovative community corridor safety management programs to reduce speeding and promote active transport use, including the City of Kelowna’s Springfield Road corridor research project. This project is analyzing the effectiveness of a multi-prong, integrated approach to manage safety on a busy city arterial, including enforcement, pavement marking, signal phasing, and information technology in real-time adaptive modes.
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Macro-Level Bicycle Comfort and Safety Prediction Model
Cycling is a sustainable and healthy mode of transportation. The objective of this project is to promote cycling by developing a community-based, macro-level bicycle comfort and safety prediction model. The developed model will quantify the safety and comfort levels of cycling routes and will be a tool in the planning and design of more convenient, desirable and safer bicycle facilities.
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2. Sustainable Development Patterns
While there is a global awareness that more sustainable community development patterns are imperative, there is no science-based, empirical agreement on the impacts and benefits of those patterns. As such, Dr. Lovegrove’s sustainable community research seeks to develop reliable, predictive, empirical tools that will quantify those evaluations for community planners, engineers, and decision-makers. Several SoE and UBCO faculty collaboration opportunities have broadened his research focus from strictly transport safety, and into land-use systems, as follows:
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Fused Grid Neighbourhoods
His research has resulted in a novel neighbourhood road pattern design – the Fused Grid neighbourhood – that suggests that over 60% of common road collisions in neighbourhoods can be eliminated. He also wishes to use his models to show the progressive improvement in road safety as more and more drivers get out of cars and onto bicycles, buses, and sidewalks. Currently, the City of Calgary is employing Fused Grid design principles in its new subdivision, which Dr Lovegrove plans to research on to confirm its effectiveness.
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Community U-Pass (ComPASS)
Dr. Lovegrove has used various Sustainable Community Grants to conduct research into an innovative sustainable transportation program, ComPASS. Combined with an NSERC USRA student, and his NSERC Discovery Grant funds, Dr. Lovegrove is researching ways to facilitate a permanent shift by residents of an existing community (Glenmore) to more sustainable transportation habits. This research will model and quantify current patterns together with a social cost-benefit analysis of desired outcomes, to inform a consultative design of effective community transition strategies toward more active transportation patterns, and away from private auto use.
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Interested in working for the STS lab?
Sign into the UBC Okanagan Job Board and look for our postings under the “Work Study” section of the “Jobs” tab.