ABJ50 Meeting at TRB Annual Meeting 2012

Information Systems and Technology Committee (ABJ50) Mid-Year Meeting at NATMEC 2014 Monday, June 30, 2014, 7:00 AM to 8:15 AM Central Time Swissotel Chicago

Attendees (In Person) Frances Harrison (Chair), Spy Pond Partners, LLC Attendees (By Phone) James Hall (Member), University of Illinois- Colin Brooks, (Member), Michigan Tech Springfield Research Institute Yinhai Wang (Member), University of Rob Zilay (Member), Dye Management Group Washington Dan Wilcox (Member) Illinois DOT Randall Burks, (Sabra-Wang & Associates Jim Yarsky (Member), Maryland SHA Jill Sullivan, Alaska DOT&PF Shannon Barnes, Idaho DOT Ramkumar Venkatamarayana , VDOT Research Heather King, Oregon DOT Yao Jan Wu, University of Arizona Doug Couto, Center for Digital Government Tom Palmerlee, TRB Shawn Blaesing, Iowa DOT Joseph Schofer, Northwestern University Edgar Kraus, Texas A&M

Review of Notes from 2014 Annual Meeting  Over 50 attendees  Special guest: Richard McKinney, USDOT CIO – spoke about moving to shared IT services across the DOT administrations and about cybersecurity – how complexity in IT systems increases risk  State DOT CIO round table discussion brought up several issues of concern including transitioning DOT IT functions from application development to integration and configuration of off-the-shelf solutions; managing customer expectations for new application functionality at “click speed”; ramping up technology and security infrastructure to support mobile application deployment  We had four presentations from key technology areas: social media, 4G LTE, Government Adoption of Cloud Services, and GIS & Big Data  We began a discussion of MAP-21 and implications for Big Data.  Notes and presentations are posted at ABJ50.ORG

Attendee Updates/Announcements From Yinhai Wang:  University of Washington is one of four teams involved in testing SHRP-2 Reliability program products. These include: o L02 - Establishing Monitoring Programs for Mobility and Travel Time Reliability o L05 – Incorporating Reliability into the Transportation Planning and Programming Process o L07 – Design Features to Reduce Nonrecurring Congestion o L08 – Incorporation of Travel Time Reliability into the Highway Capacity Manual o C11 – Development of Improved Economic Analysis Tools  Work includes a pilot implementation of the L02 procedures using the Open Street Map platform.  Yinhai suggests considering a session (2015) or workshop (2016) featuring SHRP2 implementation stories.  University of Washington is also involved in a project to test four internet-ready electric golf cart- like vehicles for data collection applications. He is interested in hearing about application ideas, and suggests that this may be a topic of interest for a future session (possibly could be part of the 2015 sensing technologies workshop?) From Doug Couto:  As a follow up to Richard McKinney’s attendance at our committee meeting, Doug facilitated an introduction to ITS America, and Richard has agreed to serve on a CTO panel at the upcoming meeting in Detroit (September 7-9). Richard enjoyed the CIO panel discussion and is open to staying engaged with ABJ50.  Doug is a member of the ITS World Congress Program Committee so would like to know who from the committee will be attending the Detroit meeting. He is thinking of arranging a no-host breakfast or lunch with Richard McKinney. Colin Brooks and Terry Bills are both on the program and exhibitors. The papers, sessions, and executive focus on IT is around security, analysis (big data), cloud, social media, and mobility. There are more IT companies joining ITS America. He is encouraging them to also become engaged with TRB.  Doug is the chair of the panel for NCHRP Project 20-96: Leadership Guide for Strategic Information Management for State Departments of Transportation. This project is the culmination of 10 years of discussions about how to make effective use of available technology to manage information so that it provides value. This could be the subject of a future committee-sponsored session. From Colin Brooks:  Another plug for the upcoming ITS World Congress – good opportunity to see demos of current sensing technologies – including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. See: http://itsworldcongress.org/events/applications-of-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-for-transportation- agencies/  (Doug adds: sensing technologies are hitting critical mass; use of UAV technology has many potential applications including bridge and roadway inspection. This technology is projected to create 3-5,000 jobs in Michigan alone.)  ABJ50 and ABJ60 (GIS Committee) are jointly sponsoring a workshop at the TRB 2015 annual meeting on sensing technologies. Colin is looking for presenters. There is also a call for papers on this topic (http://pressamp.trb.org/CallForPapers/CFPDetail.asp?cid=1917) – papers are invited and due August 1, 2014. From Edgar Kraus:  The MIRE-MIS integrates existing roadway data that might exist in various spatial and non-spatial data sources into one geospatially referenced data source. It is also a tool to extract data from other data sources (video, Google Street View, etc.) to provide at a minimum the fundamental roadway data elements required for safety analysis. Under the FHWA Roadway Data Extraction Technical Assistance Program, we are providing technical support for State DOT spatial roadway data implementations to provide a better foundation for transportation safety analyses based on new requirements in MAP-21. We will implement the MIRE-MIS at several State DOTs, starting with two pilot states this summer. We are looking for states that have plans to improve their spatial roadway databases and would like to learn more about the MIRE-MIS pilot implementations. For more information please contact [email protected], 210-979-9411. From Jim Yarsky:  MD SHA is in the process of trying to get a cloud services contract in place – currently working out contract language with legal and procurement staff. From Shannon Barnes:  Several technology initiatives underway – winter maintenance, GIS, office 365, BYOD, holistic approach to supporting transportation asset management. Network security is a big issue – ITS devices have been hacked; have four full time people devoted to this. Triennial Strategic Plan & Ideas for Annual Meeting Sessions Our current TSP outlines five primary research areas of interest for the committee:  Sensing Technologies  IT for Construction Management  IT for ITS  IT Technology Architectures and Service Models  Semantic Technologies and Data Exchange Standards Our challenge is spreading ourselves too thin – are we trying to do too much? If so, where should we focus our attention? The plan needs to be finalized March 1, 2015.

 Yinhai suggests linking to “hot topics” – Managing and integrating Big Data; the Internet of Things & Smart Cities

 Shannon suggests using “Digital Technology” as an umbrella theme for the committee – given the immense amount of information being compressed and transported; huge impact that the new digital world is having on us – what are best practices around storing data, transporting data, serving data to users?

 Doug suggests that we consider the “SMAC” construct that we used at our 2014 committee meeting: o Social Media o Mobile Solutions and Technologies o Analytics (including Big Data, GIS & Visualization) o Cloud Use and Applications And perhaps add another “S” at the end for Security - SMACS Another important IT-related phenomenon is the use of social media to facilitate personal mobility in urban areas – e.g. UBER, ZIPCAR, ZIPBIKE, etc. Tom Palmerlee noted that a TRB Policy study on this is upcoming that ABJ50 should be tracking. There is a group called “Meeting of the Minds” (see http://cityminded.org/about - meeting in Detroit in September 2014) who are concerned with technology to solve urban problems (social media, cloud services) – Doug estimates that 50% of their topics are related to some area of transportation.

 Dan W: interested in building a data architecture to support Transportation Asset Management, and transition from legacy systems; increasing deployment of field devices, offering information services to field staff and traveling public (cloud and big data issues here).

 Shawn B: interested in real-time data, getting information out to the public – especially in storms/emergency situations. Have deployed snow plow camera apps for providing real time data on plow locations and road conditions. Security is a real issue with mobile technology deployment. Also, starting a new project that will be trying to close the data life cycle gaps – involving CAD to GIS integration, bringing information from Planning to Design to Construction to Maintenance –integrating across software systems.

 Heather K: all of the above, struggling to “do more with less”, how to prioritize what to do first, how to properly sequence data collection (e.g. collect alignment first and then asset data for the alignment)

 Eric N.: interested in dealing with large data sets – agency pain point related to accepting and ingesting large data sets. Cloud may be part of the solution; but also want to look at different ways DOTs would be interested in consuming data – e.g. virtual applications, APIs.

 Joe S: two areas stand out as potential priorities for the committee: (1) Security – related to conventional data systems, mobile devices, and real time data feeds, and (2) Delivery of information for addressing major travel disruptions – storms, other disasters. o Doug notes: this second topic is being discussed at the CEO roundtable. Technologies are maturing – ex TX and LA have agreed to back each other up in the case of a disruption to one of their systems. This would not have been possible without recent technology advances. o James notes: the GIS committee has discussed this topic as well – particularly with respect to use of spatial analytics and visualization. This could be a potential area for partnership between ABJ50 and ABJ60.

 Yinhai: ABJ50 should plan a “Flagship” session that showcases important emerging technology applications in our priority areas. He will develop an initial concept for this. Upcoming Activities

 Work on the Triennial Strategic Plan: Frances to set up calls (and perhaps solicit additional input via surveymonkey.

 Paper review – Guohui Zhang has agreed to serve as our new paper review chair (THANKS!)

 Session planning- stay tuned for further details – July/August timeframe.