What's New in Data and Information Technology

This is the perfect time for your organization to show its support for transportation research and innovation by becoming a 2018 Annual Meeting Patron. Signing up now will provide your company maximum exposure and ensure it can take full advantage of all 2018 TRB Annual Meeting Patron benefits. To become an Annual Meeting Patron visit the online patron sales site or contact Patrice Davenport at...

TRB is sponsoring the Tenth SHRP 2 Safety Data Symposium: From Analysis to Results on October 6, 2017, in Washington, D.C. The program is now available online. This symposium exhibits current research projects and serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas among researchers and practitioners from the private and public sectors.  The second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) produ...

TRB will conduct a webinar on Thursday, August 24, 2017 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM ET that provides users of TRB's Research in Progress (RiP) Database with the latest information about RiP's search and data entry interfaces. The RiP Database is a leading tool for transportation professionals to stay updated on current or recently-completed transportation research projects. In order to comply with...

The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report that reviews the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s efforts to collect hydrographic data to determine the depth and bottom configuration of water bodies. The report examines how NOAA determines its hydrographic survey priorities; NOAA’s efforts to compare the costs of collecting its own survey data to the cos...

The Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University has released a report that examines the artificial neural network (ANN) approach to structural health monitoring that may augment visual inspection methods by developing a crack-induced damage quantification model for reinforced concrete bridge girders. The research develops a touch-enabled user interface to allow the ANN models to be ut...

The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University (NDSU) has released a report that investigates the effectiveness of the Great Rides Bike Share program that was launched in 2015. The research examines user opinions on the bike share program, analyzes demand for the bike share program, studies the impact of the program on NDSU student travel behavior and shifts in...

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has released a report that evaluates and improves the FDOT FB-Deep software prediction of nominal resistance of H-piles, prestressed concrete piles in Florida limestone, and large diameter (> 36”) open steel and concrete piles. The research also evaluates the estimation of unit side friction on permanent steel casing for drilled shafts in Flori...

TRB presented two awards for data sources and data fusion at the Innovations in Freight Data Workshop, which took place on May 17-18, 2017 in Irvine, California. Garreth Remple of Traininfo received the Best New Data Source Award for the “Live Train Crossing Information Tool.” Vladimir Livshits received the  Best New Data Fusion Award  behalf of Maricopa Association of Governments and...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Project 184: Synthetic Household Travel Data Using Consumer and Mobile Phone Data explores the development of a method that fuses consumer data with anonymous, passive location data to create synthetic populations with individual-level synthetic travel diaries. The travel diaries detail...

The TRB Technical Activities Division’s Planning and Environment Group is holding its 11th annual competition to find top methods for communicating transportation concepts to non-professional audiences. Entries, which should focus on communicating the value of long-term transportation planning, are due by July 24, 2017.  Additional information on the contest and entry instructions are avai...

TRB is hosting a series of webinars for participants of the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting, which takes place January 7-11, 2018 in Washington, D.C. There is no fee to attend the webinars; however participants must register in advance. Webinar recordings will be posted for those who cannot attend the live session. The following webinar schedule is posted: TRB Paper Author Webinars: July 7, 2017 at 1:0...

The International Transport Forum has released a report that examines how different people and groups experience spatial accessibility in cities. The research discusses how better data and computing power have improved accessibility analysis and mapping, and made it more relevant to people.

TRB will conduct a webinar on Monday, July 17, 2017 from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM ET that features research from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP)’s Synthesis 501 : Pavement Management Systems: Putting Data to Work.   This webinar will examine current pavement management practices, focusing primarily on the types of systems, data analysis and performance modeling, and how...

TRB is sponsoring the 8th International Visualization in Transportation Symposium: Visualization in Action on July 27-28, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Advance registration rates end June 26, 2017. The symposium theme is Visualization in Action. Today’s visualization techniques can reshape the way transportation agencies and companies approach problem solving, make decisions, and communicate with o...

TRB is accepting papers for consideration as part of the program for the 97th TRB Annual Meeting , January 7–11, 2018, in Washington, D.C., and for publication in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRR) . All papers—whether for presentation at the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting or publication in the TRR —must be submitted in PDF format directly to  T...

TRB has released its requirements for submitting papers for presentation at the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting and/or publication in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board . This guide covers the organization and formatting of manuscripts for peer review and for publication, as well as instructions for submission. Papers that do not follow the guidelines will ...

The Roadway Safety Institute at the University of Minnesota has released a report that investigates advances in identifying hot spots of motor vehicle crashes. The research uses hot spot maps to develop a new method of patrolling for intoxicated drivers.

Catherine T. Lawson, director of the Albany Visualization and Informatics Lab (AVAIL) at the State University of New York at Albany, is a featured volunteer in the September-October 2016 edition of the TR News . Dr. Lawson builds web-based tool suites for multimodal analysis, and her work has included a bus transit modeling suite for New Jersey Transit and the Metropolitan Transit Authority in ...

TRB will conduct a webinar on Monday, August 21, 2017 from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM ET that discusses two new tools designed by the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) Program: the LTPP Climate and LTPPBind Online tools. The LTPP Climate Tool offers users access to climate data derived from NASA’s Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) database for applications inc...

TRB will conduct a webinar on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM ET that highlights three statewide approaches to planning for pedestrians and bicyclists that include innovative partnerships between state departments of transportation, state departments of health, and metropolitan planning organizations or local governments. The presenters will discuss the approaches to collecting...

Statistics Canada has released a report that conceptualizes and implements a method to measures of remoteness that takes into account the most recent literature on the subject, as well as taking advantage of new computational opportunities provided by the integration of official statistics with data from non-official statistical sources. The research may fine-tune the remoteness index or discri...

The International Transport Forum has released a report that investigates the convergence of public transportation and mobility solutions, such as ride services, car- and bicycle-sharing, app-enabled on-demand micro-bus services, and platforms that connect app-using travelers and drivers. The research examines the role of public authorities in ensuring this convergence supports commercial innov...

The Transportation Research Board is seeking nominations for the Sharon D. Banks Award for Humanitarian Leadership in Transportation . This TRB award, which recognizes excellence in people-oriented initiatives throughout transportation, was inaugurated in 2002 and is presented biennially. The next presentation of the award will be made during the Chairman’s Luncheon on January 10 2018, during t...

TRB conducted a webinar on Monday, June 12, 2017, from 2:00PM to 3:30PM ET that features research from TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Report 59 : Information Technology Systems at Airports--A Primer, and ACRP Report 128 : Alternative IT Delivery Methods and Best Practices for Small Airports. Information technology (IT), a core component in an airport’s daily life, can be prob...

TRB recorded a series of videos in April 2017 that examines how transit agencies are using the increasing amounts of data they collect to more effectively manage their operations and improve system performance. The videos present several case studies that explain the benefits from integrating high quality data management practices across departments; sharing important system information interna...

The Mineta Transportation Institute at San José State University has released a report that uses a level of traffic stress (LTS) criteria to determine how the streets in selected study areas functioned for transportation modes such as bicycles, pedestrians, and bus transit. The research measures the quality and extent of the transit service area using a total travel time metric over the LTS net...

A featured article in the March-April 2017 issue of the TR News highlights photos from the 96th TRB Annual Meeting, January 8-12, 2017. The article features photographs of sessions, workshops, committee meetings, and awards. Bruce M. Smith, Apperson Crump PLC, and General Counsel, Memphis Area Transit Authority, delivered the delivered the 2017 Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecture on “Ethical I...

TRB is cosponsoring the Sixth International Symposium on Nanotechnology in Construction (NICOM6) on December 2-5, 2018 in Hong-Kong. NICOM symposia aim to exchange ideas and results in the field of nanotechnology for construction materials. The symposia facilitate the integration of scientific research obtained in laboratories and in field applications from around the world. Submit abstracts by...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 846: Improving Findability and Relevance of Transportation Information (Volumes I and II) provides practices and tools to facilitate on-demand retrieval of useful information stored in project files, libraries, and other agency archives. The report defines a management framework for classification, search, and retrieval of trans...

TRB and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) are cosponsoring the Automated Vehicles Symposium in July 11-13, 2017 in San Francisco, California. This event will focus on challenges and opportunities related to the increasing automation of motor vehicles as well as the environments in which they operate. The workshop will build on previous workshops providing update...