Commercial Remote Sensing and Spatial Information (CRS&SI) Technologies for Reliable Transportation Systems Planning

The goal of the proposed research project is to develop and validate spatial information (SI) technologies in order to plan more reliable transportation systems. The key objectives are to: (1) research and recommend the best SI technology or the best combination of technologies to capture travel time; (2) develop a space-based framework for travel time data capture, storage, retrieval, analysis and reporting; (3) research and integrate both recurring and non-recurring 'incidents related' congestion components to measure link-level reliability by time of day for transportation planning; (4) process bus travel time data for better transit planning; (5) develop interactive tools with analytical/visual capabilities to assess and report condition of the network as well as facilitate stakeholder's need in identifying, prioritizing and planning transportation projects; and (6) develop a comprehensive project outreach program and effectively inform and disseminate tools/products and outcomes to relevant transportation user-communities. The proposed methodology involves data gathering/collecting, development of tools and query applications for data processing and fusion, and decision support system (DSS) tools to calibrate regional transportation planning models, assess and report link-level reliability, rank and identify congested corridors for project selection, and for incident management and re-routing traffic.