Racism has been overt in transportation. For example, the segregation of races on intercity trains led to the infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” Supreme Court doctrine that stood for more than half a century. While many discriminatory policies have been reversed by the courts and in constitutional amendments, their impacts on society have not been fully remedied and persist. TRB’s Racial Equity Addendum to Critical Issues in Transportation  is intended to be a step in the process ...

The year 2020’s raging coronavirus pandemic and reckoning with long-standing racial injustice led to widespread disruption and suffering, social unrest, and renewed calls for an accounting of our fragmented public health system and troubled history of racial inequity. The crises of 2020 transcend transportation yet also raise fundamental questions for it along with other sectors of our society and economy. In this addendum to Critical Issues in Transportation 2019 , the Transportation Research Board (TRB...

Careers in science, engineering, and medicine offer opportunities to advance knowledge, contribute to the well-being of communities, and support the security, prosperity, and health in the United States. But many women do not pursue or persist in these careers, or advance to leadership positions - not because they lack the talent or aspirations, but because they face barriers, including: implicit and explicit bias; sexual harassment; unequal access to funding and resources; pay inequity; higher teaching ...

The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities and the Gulf Research Program summarizes the existing portfolio of relevant or related resilience measurement efforts and notes gaps and challenges associated with them. It describes how some communities build and measure resilience and offers four key actions that communities may take to build and measure their resilience. This report also provides recommendations to th...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released Assessing the Risks of Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System. This consensus study examines the various ways that risk can be defined and applied to integrating these Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It also identifies needs for additional research and developmental opportunities in this field. When discus...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released Data Matters: Ethics, Data, and International Research Collaboration in a Changing World: Proceedings of a Workshop. The publication summarizes an event held on March 14-16, 2018, in Washington, DC that explored the changing opportunities and risks of data management and use across disciplinary domains. The third workshop in a series, participants gathered to examine advisory principles for consideration when developing internatio...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report that examines the current state of U.S. graduate STEM education. The report explores how the system might best respond to ongoing developments in the conduct of research on evidence-based teaching practices and in the needs and interests of its students and the broader society it seeks to serve. The report is designed to be a resource for the primary stakeholders in the U.S. STEM enterprise, including federal and state po...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released Emergency Alert and Warning Systems. This consensus study considers new possibilities for realizing more effective alert and warning systems, explores how a more effective national alert and warning system might be created, and sets forth a research agenda to advance the nation’s alert and warning capabilities.  Congress passed the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act in 2006 following a series of natural disasters...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report that summarizes the high-level interdisciplinary discussions that took place during the Raymond and Beverly Sackler U.S.-U.K. Scientific Forum “The Frontiers of Machine Learning” took place on January 31 and February 1, 2017, in Washington, D.C. The field of machine learning continues to advance at a rapid pace owing to increased computing power, better algorithms and tools, and greater availability of data. Machine learn...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report that identifies challenges to establishing a real-time system-wide safety assurance (RSSA) system and the high-priority research that should be implemented by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other interested parties in government, industry, and academia to expedite development of such a system. RSSA is one of six focus areas for the NASA aeronautics program. NASA envisions that an RSSA system ...