Year: 2023

Greg Mandelman joins RSG as Vice President of Market Research and brings nearly 20 years of experience tackling complex social and analytical challenges around the world.

Throughout his career, Greg has been integral to the success of transformative projects, with a focus on conducting behavioral energy research and modeling transportation electrification trends. He has overseen a multimillion-dollar portfolio of behavioral energy research, led a team of statisticians and analysts at a major utility company, and designed an electric vehicle energy impact forecasting model for state regulators in California.

“I’m thrilled to join RSG,” said Greg. “RSG does what few firms can by pairing data collection with modeling and analysis to deliver exceptional client solutions. In addition to this, RSG’s focus on behavioral research means I can continue to help clients in the energy and vehicle electrification spaces while being part of a larger team that delivers unmatched research and analytics.”

Greg's experience leading behavioral research in the transportation and energy sectors will help RSG continue to deliver exceptional survey-based research services to our clients while expanding into new, high-growth markets.

Ken Kaliski, Principal at RSG, was appointed as Project Leader for the revision of ISO 1996-1 during the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ISO/TC 43 “Acoustics” Plenary Meeting in Montreal, Canada, held from May 2 to May 6, 2023. The ISO 1996-1 is an international standard on acoustics, focusing on the description, measurement, and assessment of environmental noise.

In his new role, Ken's duties will include managing the ISO standard's content to create an updated international standard. This task will require collecting the most recent research for drafting the standard, fostering agreement among the global community, and facilitating several comment and response rounds. ISO delegates will then vote on the updated standard. Ken will supervise the process as Project Leader.

“I'm thrilled to take on the Project Leader role for the revision of ISO 1996-1, Acoustics — Description, measurement and assessment of environmental noise — Part 1: Basic quantities and assessment procedures,” Ken said. “I eagerly anticipate contributing to a global agreement to enhance the procedures that practitioners rely on. I'd like to extend my gratitude to the previous Project Leader, Stephen Keith, the US delegation for their nomination, and Douglas Manville, the Convenor of Working Group 45.”

RSG's noise control engineering service depends on national and international standards like ISO 1996-1. Ken's role as Project Leader will ensure these standards remain current and relevant. The final revised standard will contribute to enhancing our service quality and helping our projects earn acceptance from clients and regulators.

RSG's Ken Kaliski (Principal) and Ryan Haac (Consultant) co-wrote a paper with experts from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Vermont Environmental Research Associates, Inc., titled “Effects of land-based wind turbine upsizing on community sound levels and power and energy density,” on wind turbine upsizing's impact on community sound and power output levels, published in the journal Applied Energy. Their paper will be the subject of a webinar on April 13, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT).

The team studied larger turbines' effects on micro-siting, power, energy density, and noise. They used desktop software to model larger turbines on two wind development sites and three turbine models representing past, present, and future periods for three manufacturers. The study aimed to maximize the number of turbines and total power output within each site's constraints.

The findings suggest that future larger turbines will lead to fewer turbines per land unit and lower community sound levels, but with increased capacity and energy output.

Key results include:

• Future turbines are over 60% taller, with 60% fewer turbines fitting in the same land area.
• Despite fewer turbines, future turbine-based projects have higher capacities and higher annual energy output per land area.
• Community sound levels at homes will be significantly lower, despite louder turbines.
• Lower sound levels affect homes near projects and those close to turbines on hosting parcels.
• Wider adoption of taller, high-capacity turbines will likely yield numerous benefits in the future.

Kevin Johnson joins RSG as a Director and brings over 17 years of experience managing large multimodal transportation planning projects.

Kevin has worked primarily on big data and travel modeling projects, integrating big data into the model validation process to improve the accuracy of forecasts.

“Solving complex problems for clients through innovative travel behavior modeling has been at the core of my professional work to date,” said Kevin. “I’m excited to continue my career at RSG where I hope to contribute to work advancing the state of the practice of model development and application.”

Kevin's experience delivering models and datasets that improve project outcomes will help RSG continue to deliver client-focused solutions in the travel model development and passive mobility data analytics spaces.

RSG has appointed Tim Young as our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This newly created position, which replaces the Chief Information Officer (CIO) role, recognizes and elevates the importance of RSG's technical, software, and data science services and offerings.

As CTO, Tim will help us continue to deliver a client-oriented approach to solving complex problems, ensuring alignment between RSG's technological resources and the shifting needs of our clients. “With the ever-changing marketplace, it will be critical for us to make informed and strategic decisions about the future,” said Tim. “I'm thrilled to lead the team that will help RSG meet the evolving technological needs of our clients.”

RSG is an industry leader in the technological product and services space. In addition to developing rMove™, the world's most accurate approach for location-aware market research, RSG has developed or been integral to the creation of several open-source applications. These tools include ActivitySim, STOPS (Simplified Trips-on-Project Software), and VisionEval, among others.

Jeremy Wilhelm joins RSG as a Director and brings over 15 years of experience as a project manager with a focus on data analysis and consensus-building.

Jeremy has directed work on transportation and mobility, education, and public health projects, most notably in the household travel survey space.

“Joining RSG feels like a natural continuation of my educational and professional path,” said Jeremy. “I’m excited to help RSG build on its reputation for conducting high-quality research and delivering impactful, insightful tools.”

Jeremy's proven track record of turning survey results into practical solutions that unite stakeholders around shared goals will help RSG continue to deliver exceptional survey-based research services to our clients.

The Federal Transit Administration's Simplified Trips-on-Project Software (STOPS) was this year's recipient of the Zephyr Foundation's Impactful Research Award. This award recognizes a research project that has had the most relatively recent impact on bettering the travel analysis field for the public good.

RSG worked with FTA to develop STOPS, which streamlines the development of ridership forecasts. These forecasts are a key element of project evaluation. The STOPS forecasting system utilizes information from the Census Transportation Planning Package. Planners can code project changes to General Transit Feed Specification files and then run the software to determine future ridership for the project as a whole and for each station.

RSG is proud to have been a participant in the creation of STOPS and congratulates FTA on this significant accomplishment.