ENGR 0715 - Engineering Applications for Society

Spring 2008 Projects

Development of Online Shuttle Bus Selection Program

Community Partner: Disability Resourses and Services

Team:

Adam Niederle, Chris Simmons, Jenny Huling, Michael Ramella

Problem Statement:

Disability Resources Center - DRS is a department within the Division of Student Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and is located in RM 216 of the William Pitt Union. According to their website, the DRS "shares with you, the student, the responsibility for creating equal access toward achievement of your academic goals". In short, the DRS aims to make the lives of disabled students at the University of Pittsburgh as painless and normal as possible.

The goal of our project was to develop a means by which disabled students can efficiently request to use the disability shuttle, and by which the DRS can quickly respond to the student, without being greatly burdened by the nature or volume of requests. Additionally, a means was developed to help the DRS recommend to students which Pitt shuttle they should take to get from one place to another if the disability shuttle cannot be accessed. Both systems were designed to be easily maintainable, as the DRS is overwhelmed by the volume of work they have. To achieve this goal, we developed an easy to use program where a starting and ending location can be selected, and the program will provide the location and time of where a shuttle with disability access can be used. This program was developed to be as intuitive as possible so it can cater to as wide of an audience as possible. Additionally, on the DRS website, a request form will be made where disabled students can fill in information and the DRS can contact them back about the availability of the Disability Shuttle.

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