Introduction of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) will pose safety, economic, operational, regulatory, community, environmental, and infrastructure challenges to airports. These risks are further complicated by the dynamic nature of UAS technological development. Experiences and lessons learned from recent major aviation system changes demonstrate the critical importance of ensuring that airports have the resources needed to avoid adverse impacts and maximize benefits as early as possible. This pre-publica...

It is anticipated that unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) will increase in activity within the airport environment and will expand due to market demand, operational requirements, and changes in UAS specifications (such as size, weight, and payload). To date, the majority of small UAS, defined as less than 55 pounds, operate outside of the airport environment. However, some public airports are currently supporting limited UAS operations (like testing, agriculture, survey, photography, and racing). As a resul...

On April 9–10, 2019, 127 freight community members— including transportation professionals from transportation planning agencies, independent consultants, industry experts, and academic researchers from across North America—participated in the second Innovations in Freight Data Workshop in Irvine, California. Alison Conway from City College of New York chaired the planning committee for this workshop. Transportation Research Circular E-C255: Innovations in Freight Data Workshop includes summaries of the ...

Major technological and security changes in the aviation industry over the past 20 years have forced airport leaders and aviation stakeholders to think of new research ideas that will improve the planning and development of policies and new models that foster growth of air service, incorporate new airport and customer technology, revise airport business models, and better interact with neighboring communities. ACRP (Airport Cooperative Research Program) Web-Only Document 39: Policy and Planning Issues Ro...

"Big data" is not new, but applications in the field of transportation are more recent, having occurred within the past few years, and include applications in the areas of planning, parking, trucking, public transportation, operations, ITS, and other more niche areas. A significant gap exists between the current state of the practice in big data analytics (such as image recognition and graph analytics) and the state of DOT applications of data for traffic incident management ( TIM) (such as the manual u...

Papers released the week of October 7 through the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board OnlineFirst portal include the following: Defining Psychometric Variables Related to Use of Autonomous Vehicles - Don MacKenzie, Andisheh Ranjbari, Yanbo Ge, Eric Barber, Elyse O'C. Lewis Implications of Including Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement Materials to Performance of Balanced Asphalt Concrete Mixes - Imad Abdallah, Jose Garibay, Luiza Barros, Victor M. Garcia, Soheil Nazarian Fo...

Identifying the location, size, and extent of weld defects or flaws can be critical for ensuring bridge safety. Current bridge-inspection practice relies primarily on visual inspection for detecting cracks but is not capable of detecting subsurface weld defects that may develop into cracks under service loading. Other technologies such as conventional ultrasonic testing (UT) and radiographic testing (RT) can detect subsurface flaws, but are used primarily during the bridge-fabrication process because the...

The U.S. Navy has many unique naval engineering needs that demand a highly capable and robust U.S. naval engineering enterprise. In seeking an independent review of the unclassified elements of its National Naval Responsibilities—Naval Engineering (NNR-NE) program, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) asked for recommendations on ways to ensure the program meets the many naval engineering research, education, and workforce needs that will be critical to the Future Navy.  Toward New Naval Platform...

The introduction of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has presented a wide range of new safety, economic, operational, regulatory, community, environmental, and infrastructure challenges to airports and the National Airspace System. These risks are further complicated by the dynamic and shifting nature of UAS technologies. The pre-publication draft of ACRP Research Report 212: Airports and Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Volume 1: Managing and Engaging Stakeholders on UAS in the Vicinity of Airports provides gu...

Federal laws and regulations affect transportation agencies in their business practices, construction of facilities, hiring, and services provided to the public. TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Legal Research Digest 77: Update of Selected Studies in Transportation Law, Volume 8, Section 1: Civil Rights and Transportation Agencies is designed to help state highway departments and transportation agencies keep abreast of operating practices and legal elements of specific problems...