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Volpe Center Highlights - October/November 2001

Director's Notes

Director's Notes | Focus | Safety | Mobility | Human and Natural Environment
Economic Growth | National Security | Papers and Presentations

Managing Information to Improve Transportation

Knowledge empowers decision making. For those of us working in transportation, harnessing this power enables us to improve the safety, security, and capacity of the nation's transportation system. Volpe teams use our rich data resources to perform safety analyses, risk assessments, and cost/benefit analyses of transportation technologies and methods. Our analysts can identify safety hazards, accident causes and consequences, and remedial actions, and determine safety benefits, user acceptability, and economic viability.

The value of information is vastly multiplied when it is shared, and today, Internet data-delivery systems are essential to such sharing. The Volpe Center is in the forefront of the design, development, and operation of Web sites and Web-based tools.

For example, Volpe database specialists have developed safety performance monitoring systems that monitor carriers for performance measures using a variety of parameters and call attention to any deviations from normal patterns. Volpe-developed systems are used by the Department of Defense and Federal Aviation Administration, which monitor air carriers through the Safety Performance Analysis System, and by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which uses SafeStat to monitor motor carriers and provide results on line via its Web site.

This issue of Highlights presents some of the work we're doing at the Volpe Center to advance the development and sharing of information. Although these projects range widely in topic and scope, they all in some way support informed decision making, which requires reliable, accurate, easily accessible and understandable information. They address our sponsors' needs to collect, analyze, and/or disseminate information. Researchers need high-quality data systems to develop useful solutions; pilots depend on navigation and surveillance systems to transmit information such as vehicle location, speed, and destination, as well as weather and visibility conditions; managers rely on performance analysis tools to keep critical systems up and running; organizations use knowledge management systems to help improve performance and spark innovation. The Focus article highlights our work for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in support of its Safety Data Action Plan and Intermodal Transportation Data Base, both designed to improve the consistency, quality, and dissemination of data across all modes.

The results of good statistical analyses coupled with emerging technologies and strategic planning enable proactive approaches to making the nation's travels safer and more secure and efficient. Data coordination and mining can point to accident precursors and help devise methods to predict safety problems and develop countermeasures to prevent them. The Volpe Center will remain a leader in exploring more effective and innovative ways to use data to improve our transportation system.

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