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3CHAPTER 1 Foundation for Action Making well-informed, responsible decisionsis critical to shaping the nationâs transporta-tion infrastructure. Geospatial data are a foundation for relevant and critical information for planning, engineering, asset management, and opera- tions associated with every transportation mode at all levels of government and administration. Extracting these data, transforming them, and making them available to decision makers have dramatically increased in importance as all modes and levels of gov- ernment face increasing responsibility for improving efficiency while maintaining mobility, improving safety, and anticipating and addressing security threats. Geospatial data are everywhere and pervade virtually all aspects of daily life. However, they do not stand alone as something that can be seen, touched, or felt. Instead, they work in concert with a family of technologies that result in society being served and enhanced in new and dif- ferent ways. This family of tools ranges from decision- support systems that are used for top-level decision making to systems for collecting and processing data. This report is a call to action and includes a recom- mended program to enable transportation leaders, administrators, planners, and operators to leverage the full benefits of geospatial information, its family of tools and technologies, and the professionals who use them for making informed decisions. Geospatial data can enhance transportation user mobility, safety, and security. When professionals com- bine the data with current tools and technologies, the promise demonstrated over the last 10 years for improved efficiency in planning, policy development, asset management, and operations can be realized. Now is the time to move from experimentation and lim- ited application to widespread and integrated use. The theme and vision presented in this report focus on steps to expedite deployment and institutionalize geospatial data as a fundamental part of the business model for the 21st-century transportation agency. On the basis of the presentations and its deliberations, the committee concluded that to respond to a world in which data and technology are evolving more rapidly than the institutions that use them, a new model for devel- opment and use of geospatial information by the trans- portation system is needed. In this changing world, the perception of the federal role needs to shift from decision maker and implementer to leader and facilitator. The actions necessary to make widespread use of geospatial data in a systematic way could be achieved through a focused alliance and collaboration among public, private, and academic communities. A key is in recognizing that the role of federal agencies is to enable state and local agencies and the private sector to carry out their missions. A practical role, rather than to mandate data require- ments, would be to solicit data from data owners and providers and to encourage data sharing among agencies, users, and decision makers. As customer expectations and management requirements for more timely data increase, especially in areas like security, organizations will need to develop arrangements for sharing real-time information. Sharing data for the sake of sharing is not an effec- tive strategy. Alliances and collaboration should be based on careful analysis of potential benefits and
responsibilities of potential partners. Resources are lim- ited. Maintaining effective relationships requires resource commitments that must be justified to taxpay- ers and investors. Providing workable standards, proto- cols, and documentation is not without cost, so the benefits to all stakeholders must be clear. Organizations and customer expectations are transitioning from sys- tems that provide data for âsnapshotsâ at certain times to more dynamic requirements like 511 systems. Business processes that focus on the ultimate service or products provided, not on improving the efficiency of current practices, must evolve. Understanding how geospatial technologies can be implemented within and across agencies and recogniz- ing the costs and benefits of doing so will advance this transition. Geospatial data underpin decision making and are a part of the transportation infrastructure requiring sustained, continuous funding. When man- agers, decision makers, and policy setters consider issues in combination with the resources they have, they must be able to recognize the benefits of geospatial data and technologies. The burden of providing this knowl- edge in an easily comprehensible manner falls largely on the providers of the data and technology. Funding becomes available if a compelling case is made to the people who control the funds. Geospatial data and technology providers must effectively inform funding providers of both the value of these technologies and, more important, the cost of making decisions without them. Success stories, lessons learned, research results, and costâbenefit analyses, to name a few examples, must be developed, published, and promoted for this to happen. Enhanced coordination among related efforts must also be encouraged. Such coordination can be stimu- lated from above, from below, and from the sides, but it seldom comes from within. This may be because an individual, a department, or an agency is motivated to meet its own objectives with its own limited resources. Coordination or sharing of data and technologies typi- cally draws from these resources. Without a mandate from above, peer pressure, or the support of practition- ers, little coordination or sharing appears to occur. Awareness and understanding can promote coordina- tion as more people recognize the positive results that can accrue. Providers of transportation, the delivery system for economic viability, are under increasing pressure from multiple frontsâthe need to maintain mobility, improve safety, and anticipate and address security threats, and to do so more efficiently and with increas- ingly limited resources. The diversity and complexity of these demands require a comprehensive understanding of the issues facing decision makers. This understand- ing, in turn, requires multiple sources of data that are accurate, timely, and usable; the tools and technology to integrate these data into the information necessary to support responsible decision making; and the necessary business processes to make the best use of these data and technologies. Figure 1-1 illustrates how, from one direction, good decisions rely on a solid foundation of data collection, while from the other direction, data that are collected must be robust enough to provide the foundation for sound decision making. The past decade has shown that it is impractical for federal and state transportation agencies to collect, maintain, and develop comprehensive geospatial data sets to support broad decision-making activities. A more viable approach appears to be to encourage agenciesâ public or privateâthat are closest to the source to col- lect and maintain data necessary for their missions and to facilitate sharing of these data while developing the expertise to integrate them into broader decision-sup- port environments. Sustained leadership and funding for collecting, maintaining, processing, and sharing data are important to this approach. In an environment where leadership is changing more frequently, educating lead- ers is an increasing challenge requiring both analysis of 4 GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE FOR TRANSPORTATION ORGANIZATIONS DECISION MAKING INFORMATION DATA DECISIONS Policies Funding Priorities GOALS AND OBJECTIVES Mobility Safety Security Sustainability INFORMATION Where When Why What Who ANALYSIS TECHNOLOGIES Geospatial tools Filtering tools Integration tools Analysis tools DATA Geospatial data Attribute data Real-time data Imagery DATA COLLECTION Surveying Field collection GPS Sensors Remote sensing FIGURE 1-1 Data to decisions (GPS = Global Positioning System).
the utility of more comprehensive data and regular com- munication with leadership on those benefits. Chapters 2 and 3 provide a series of representative current practices related to geospatial information and their present use in decision making within select trans- portation agencies. A view of what can be expected from geospatial tools and technologies in the future and how these might affect transportation decision making is presented. Chapter 4 sets forth findings and recom- mendations with regard to institutional roles and responsibilities, capacity and commitment building, and geospatial information infrastructure. Chapter 5 renews and emphasizes the call to action supported by this report. 5FOUNDATION FOR ACTION
