Implementing Transportation Knowledge Networks (2009)

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11 Overview This chapter presents products and strategies for improved information access. These products and strategies provide concrete examples to the stakeholder community of the potential value and benefit provided by implementation of TKNs. Objectives Based on the feedback received in the initial outreach phase of the project and subsequent input from the project panel, the following objectives were established for TKN products and strategies: • Provide a “one-stop shopping” portal for transportation information as a focal point, building on existing resources and the vision established by TRB Special Report 284. • Emphasize the collaborative arrangements and processes that will need to be in place to share information across organizations. • Incorporate support for peer-to-peer sharing of current practices and best practices. • Address the need for improved vertical search tools (i.e., domain-specific search capabilities) for information of interest to transportation practitioners, providing access to a broader pool of digital information resources than is cur- rently available. • Support the need for consistent cataloging and preserva- tion of information resources. The research statement suggested that TKN products and strategies build from the “vision of a user-focused transporta- tion information system” that was described on page 51 of TRB Special Report 284 (1) and focus on ways to deliver information to specific types of end users when they need it and in a usable form. This vision is reproduced below: Envision state department of transportation employees working at their desks on time-sensitive projects or projects with long timescales: • They identify a need for information and, because of good marketing in the agency, they know where to turn. They open their Internet or intranet browser to the library page or information portal and choose the service they desire, such as literature review, facts on file (common questions from across the country that are stored for easy retrieval), or reference requests. • They find a front-end application that asks them how they want to search for information—geographically, topically, by title or author, or by other formats. This interface is visu- ally engaging and easy to use. With a click, they are taken to that search tool, or this information is all on the first page. • They type in their search phrase or point and click to icons and retrieve the desired information. The databases and systems that are being searched are noted while the search is under way (“now searching BIOSIS . . .”). • They can clarify whether they want information in narrative form, tabular, or geospatial data, or all of these. To help refine the search, questions that librarians typically ask users are programmed into the system. • Once they come up with a list that reflects the information they are seeking, they can check boxes to say “I want to save this information” and create a customized list stored under their e-mail address or account. • They can then retrieve the documents and data on the list with highlights pointing to the specific text relevant to their search. Because the documents and data are tagged, they are able to find specifically what they are seeking. The behind- the-scenes effort to obtain, catalog, index, tag, and store the information is not obvious. • They are able to pull quotes from the documents, with prompts helping them understand copyright laws and appropriate uses and references. C H A P T E R 3 TKN Products and Strategies

• If a document is not available electronically, they are offered a menu for delivery: interlibrary loan (because of the Trans- portation Libraries Catalog or First Search, the location of the closest borrowing institution is known); electronic doc- ument delivery (from where and how much); purchase of paper copies (from where, how much, and how fast); or whatever the correct terminology is for the suite of options. In this vision, they will not have to pay $800 for a full docu- ment if they want only a paragraph from it. • When the site includes data references, they can easily understand the data platform and relevant uses. • The results are provided to them in good English without cryptic abbreviations. • Ideally, the system is somewhat fun or at least easy to use, and they understand the sources they are searching, how far those sources will take them, and when they will need to seek additional information. Product and Service Components Building on the framework established in TRB Special Report 284, the study team developed an expanded vision of the components of a transportation information infrastructure. This vision is illustrated below in Figure 1. Key elements (reading Figure 1 from top to bottom) are the following: • A portal serving as a national focal point for transportation information, providing access to the core information resources. These resources will be physically distributed. The portal will draw upon multiple information repositories and improve discovery and access to existing disseminated infor- mation. It will allow TKN member organizations to sub- scribe to information feeds or receive e-mail notifications when information changes. The boxes at the top of Figure 1 are features that will be provided on the portal, allowing users to browse or search the information resources. • A network of transportation information providers and practitioners (represented by the shaded boxes in the mid- dle of Figure 1) who share their information resources and participate in shaping the content and services provided by the portal. • An evolving set of distributed information resources and tools for accessing these resources. Information resources will include GIS data sets, training materials, image files, and documents. Tools will include search engines and query capabilities. • Knowledge services and protocols for acquiring, cataloging, digitizing, archiving, and sharing information resources. • Standards that facilitate information sharing, including a thesaurus or taxonomy of terms, glossaries, metadata stan- dards, data exchange standards, and crosswalks that allow for translation across different formats. TKN Product and Service Descriptions The Transportation Information Portal A mock-up of the home page of the Transportation Infor- mation Portal is shown in Figure 2. 12 Transportation Information Portal (provided by national TKN coordination function – components available for incorporation into other web pages) Find Information Ask a Question Event Calendar Find a Person Submit a Resource Research in Progress News Communities of Practice Transportation Topics Information Resources & Tools (Responsibility for coordination, contributions and maintenance shared across TKNs/Information Providers) Standards & Crosswalks (metadata, thesaurus, taxonomy) Knowledge Services & Protocols (Resource archiving, digitization, cataloging, bulk purchasing, interlibrary loan) US DOT RITA, Modal Admins State DOTs TRB (TRIS, RiP, Needs) Universities MPOs GIS Data Tabular Datasets Standards & Guidelines Manuals Directories Images & Video Tutorials Legislation Lessons Learned Events Performance Data Commercial Databases Library Resources OCLC, TLCat, First Search Other Federal Agencies Local Jurisdictions AASHTO Industry, Non-Profits Figure 1. Transportation information infrastructure vision.

Key features of the portal include the following: Find Information—A page that allows users to identify information resources relevant to their questions. This page will provide access to different information sources, including agency survey results, library catalogs, data sets, and legislation. It will include a search capability showing different sources of transportation information, illustrating access to the resources shown in published literature, data sets, legislation, lessons learned, etc. It will also include an option to request a literature review on a particular topic area. The portal, as planned, makes use of federated search tech- nology in order to connect users to authoritative information sites and to simultaneously search live content based on speci- fied criteria. Federated search technology provides better qual- ity results than a general search engine because it targets specific sites (that may not be linked to other Web content) and performs translations from search criteria provided by the user to those required by the target site(s). Examples of Web sites using federated search include Amazon.com, Science.gov, mednar.com, medlineplus.gov/, and usa.gov. The Virginia DOT Research Library has implemented a pilot of this technol- ogy called OneSearch (3). Research and literature review services will be offered via discussion forum, e-mail, phone, or messaging. Tremendous benefits can be realized by offering services of skilled, special- ized transportation information professionals for conducting literature reviews, building annotated bibliographies on partic- ular topic areas, or simply tracking down answers to specific information requests. Wide availability of these services to the transportation community will save time and provide better information for both research and practice. Individual requests could be distributed to specific designated specialists (among the TKN membership) by subtopic. Over time, additional effi- ciencies will be realized as multiple requests on the same topic are received. Ask a Question—Page where users submit a question to be answered by the network of transportation information professionals within the TKNs. The user may choose to chat online with the scheduled information professional or to sub- mit a question by e-mail. If appropriate, the user may then be connected with appropriate communities of practice, which are part of the TKN. Event Calendar—Consolidated calendar of events rele- vant to transportation professionals. The TKN-NCB and 13 Figure 2. Transportation information portal mock-up.

each TKN maintain a contact with professional organizations and arrange for sharing of events calendars. Find a Person—Directory (or set of distributed directories) of transportation professionals organized by function. The intent of this page is to answer questions such as “Who is the traffic engineer for city x,” or “Who can I talk to in state Y about experience with public-private partnerships?” Contact information is updated annually by regional TKNs that iden- tify individuals in key roles within their member organizations. The TKN-NCB coordinates the establishment of which stan- dard roles are to be included and sets the structure for the con- tact information. News—Page with links to current news stories and clip- ping files of relevance to transportation professionals. This page draws upon subscriptions to news services such as Lexis- Nexis, ProQuest, and Dow Jones Factiva. Transportation Topics—Page provides quick access to a fil- tered set of information resources organized by topical areas within transportation (e.g., highway safety, asset management, congestion pricing). National topic leaders will be identified to provide content. Submit a Resource—Page provides an easy way to submit an electronic document or data set for inclusion in one or more designated information repositories. Core databases include TRIS Online, the NTL’s Digital Catalog, TKN identified repos- itories, and TRB’s Research in Progress. Each TKN member submits resources, following the indexing guidelines estab- lished by the TKN-NCB and TKNs. Outreach and training will be provided to enable and encourage transportation organiza- tions not able to build their own repositories (or that have lim- ited capacity) to contribute resources. Research in Progress—Access to the TRB Research in Progress site; links to other sites with updates on active transportation-related research. Communities of Practice—List of active communities of practice that incorporates the current FHWA set in addition to a broader set for other TKN market segments. Designated TKN topic leaders maintain the list of communities of practice. Information Resources and Tools The portal will draw upon a pool of information resources including those that currently exist (such as TRIS, TLCat, OCLC, and the TRB Research in Progress), as well as additional resources that are gathered over time to fill priority gaps in practitioner needs. A distributed model will be used, with emphasis on helping people find needed resources wherever they are stored. However, in order to meet the demand for additional digital resources, part of the TKN effort will involve expanding and enhancing the NTL’s existing digital repository. To minimize duplication and provide opportunities for wider sharing of information resources across organizations, seed funding to support transportation libraries to catalog collec- tions into OCLC will also be provided. Part of the value added by the TKN initiative is to gather information from member organizations based on common standards. Simple examples include building a consolidated event calendar or creating a contacts database based on a com- mon set of functions across agencies (as opposed to agency job titles). Other examples are assembly of strategic highway safety plans from all of the states and display of location-based infor- mation from multiple states (e.g., infrastructure condition, traffic, crashes). TKNs have already begun such activities albeit at a limited scale by contributing state climate change informa- tion to augment the national climate change information avail- able through climate.dot.gov. Collaborative approaches will also be explored for improv- ing member organization access to fee-based information resources, such as professional journals, scientific literature, and standards documents. Negotiation of group subscrip- tion rates at a national level will reduce access costs to these resources for individual TKN members. Where licensing for direct access to such resources for employees of multiple organizations cannot be negotiated, a subsidized interlibrary loan service can be explored, using the “Loansome Doc” service of the National Library of Medicine as a possible model. Services, Standards, and Protocols for Information Sharing Information-sharing services, standards, and protocols are critical elements of the TKN initiative. These include imple- mentation of technologies that enable data sharing, develop- ment of model programmatic initiatives such as interlibrary loan or data-sharing agreements, collection management strategies to avoid unnecessary duplication, and supporting services for digitizing, indexing, and cataloging information resources so they can be shared. Ideally, one outcome of the network will be that information producers begin to build in standard ways of providing and disseminating their information. For example, a research proj- ect to perform a multi-state synthesis of current practice could be scoped to produce as one of its deliverables a set of tagged results in a format that could be easily integrated into the por- tal. This approach dramatically increases the value provided through these research programs by making the information produced more easily accessible and integrated with related resources. 14

Use of common standards is an underpinning of the success of information-sharing efforts. The library community has decades of experience with data standards (e.g., MARC, Dublin Core). Standards are continuing to evolve for sharing informa- tion resources over the World Wide Web. The transportation community has a thesaurus of transportation research terms (the TRT) that was initially released in 2001 and that has been steadily improved since then. The TRT provides standardized terminology for indexing information resources in the TRIS database as well as in government and university transporta- tion library collections and Web pages. It currently contains roughly 10,000 terms and is maintained with part-time staff and voluntary assistance. In contrast, the NAL thesaurus con- tains over 68,500 terms and is maintained by a staff of seven indexers (4). The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus contains over 160,000 entry terms. The Unified Medical Lan- guage System® (UMLS) includes a “Metathesaurus” that incorporates MeSH and several other vocabularies and a “Semantic Network” that includes 135 semantic types and 54 relationships across the types. The semantic types are assigned to concepts in the Metathesaurus. MeSH and the UMLS are used for indexing, cataloging, search, and natural language processing applications in medicine and related fields. This improves the ability to find information relevant to the searcher’s need. The resources provided to the TKN initiative will allow for continued expansion and improvement of the TRT to fill exist- ing gaps in terminology and allow the TRT to evolve into a more useful and widely used resource. Example Scenarios Four scenarios were developed to illustrate and communi- cate the value of the TKN products and services. Each of these scenarios illustrates a situation in which a transportation prac- titioner is seeking information. In today’s situation—namely, without active and coordinated TKNs and a central portal for transportation information—these searches likely take con- siderably more time and yield less useful outcomes. Standard Internet searches won’t yield the most valuable information resources for the task at hand. Practitioners waste time re- creating material (presentations, training manuals) that others have already produced. In the scenarios presented below, the efficiency of users’ searches is enabled through coordination and collaboration activities that are taking place “behind the scenes” to provide the information being sought in a convenient and timely man- ner. The scenarios assume that the national TKN coordination function develops and maintains the transportation informa- tion portal. With input from TKN members and guidance from the national TKN steering committee, priority topic areas are reviewed and revised each year. Teams of topic leaders are enlisted in each of the priority areas. These teams work with information specialists from the national or regional TKNs to craft the initial set of information resources for inclusion in the portal (FAQ, list of resources, contact people) and to review these for currency on a quarterly basis. The information man- agement specialist ensures that each relevant resource is archived (if needed) and properly cataloged and tagged. Scenario 1: VMT-Based User Fees Situation: A state DOT policy analyst receives an urgent request from his commissioner to prepare a legislative briefing on the implications of mileage-based user fees. The briefing must be completed within 24 hours. TKN Value Provided: The analyst goes to the national transportation portal, selects the “Transportation Finance” topic under “Transportation Topics,” and then clicks on “syn- thesis documents.” The first link on the list is a briefing paper done for the National Surface Transportation Policy and Rev- enue Study Commission. This paper includes a summary of advantages and obstacles, technological approaches, a review of recent experience, revenue implications and key policy issues. It also includes comments from the blue ribbon panel that are indicative of the kinds of questions that the policy ana- lyst should anticipate. This gives the policy analyst a “big pic- ture” view of the topic. The second link on the list is a reference to an FHWA- funded “National Evaluation of a Mileage-Based Road User Charge,” a $16.5 million effort including field tests of technol- ogy and user acceptability in six locations (Austin, TX; Balti- more, MD; Boise, ID; Eastern Iowa; the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina; and San Diego). The policy analyst notes that one of these locations is in his home state and makes a note to obtain further information on this initiative for inclu- sion in the briefing. The policy analyst then finds that there is a Transportation Finance Community of Practice Web site referenced in the portal. He goes to this site and sees that a colleague in another state has posted a presentation prepared in response to a simi- lar request. The policy analyst is able to adapt material from this presentation for his briefing, saving considerable time. Scenario 2: Winter Storm After Action Report Scenario: A winter storm brings traffic to a standstill on a 20-mile section of an Interstate highway. Motorists are stranded for hours. Following this incident, the state DOT Sec- retary requests a review of how to avoid this situation in the future, along with a list of action items for immediate imple- mentation. His chief of operations asks her assistant to produce 15

a briefing on what went wrong and what steps should be taken to avoid the situation in the future. TKN Value Provided: The assistant uses the transporta- tion information portal to identify colleagues at other agencies to interview, seek alternative solutions for road weather infor- mation systems (RWIS) capabilities, and identify available resource materials for conducting drills. The portal contains a news subscription service, and a search of major newspapers brings up several stories of similar incidents in major metro- politan areas. The researcher looks for more information and finds several news clippings, press releases, and a consultant’s report analyzing the agency’s response and making recom- mendations to avoid that situation in the future. She reads the key findings, which include the need for pre-event incident response training, lack of policies and procedures for chemical additive stockpiles, and inoperable RWIS sites. She and the chief of operations get on the phone with their own RWIS per- son and find that they, too, have an issue with reliability of sen- sors. They use the “Find a Person” feature to locate the right contact person at appropriate states, and call the contacts to see how they responded to the recommendations, get a copy of the training materials, and ask how they are addressing the RWIS issue. The assistant then adapts the training materials (only minor changes needed) and uses the “Submit Resources” feature to post the adapted training materials to the portal. She also goes to the “Community of Practice” area, finds the NTIMC traffic incident management community of practice, and adds a comment pointing others to the consultant report and the training materials that were posted. Scenario 3: Public–Private Partnerships Scenario: A state-level joint legislative subcommittee is appointed to study use of competitive bidding practices for public-private partnerships (PPP) in the United States and internationally and to recommend changes in the state’s exist- ing legislation to encourage more competition. Legislative staff is charged with preparing a scope for this study and identifying national experts to provide assistance. TKN Value Provided: Legislative staff use the transporta- tion information portal and quickly find the FHWA PPP Web site, which includes a state-by-state analysis of legislation. They use the portal’s clipping service to review articles about com- petitive bidding practices in Canada, Australia, India, and China. The staffers use the directory to locate relevant contacts in several states to learn more about their procurement prac- tices. They also contact those involved in several projects in Canada. Three of the people contacted are willing to testify before the committee. Scenario 4: Safety Improvement Prioritization Methods Scenario: A county traffic engineer with 40 years of expe- rience retires, taking with him an encyclopedic knowledge of the road system and its “hotspots,” an intuitive feel for how to make best use of available safety dollars, and a strong personal network of contacts in neighboring jurisdictions and other agencies. His replacement, a young engineer, is looking to implement a data-driven approach to identifying and priori- tizing safety improvements. TKN Value Provided: The young engineer goes to the transportation information portal to look for models and resources. He identifies a program description and simple software application for prioritizing countermeasures from a similar rural county, which he is able to adapt for his needs. 16