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Volpe Center Highlights - November/December 2002

Director's Notes

Director's Notes | Focus | Safety | Mobility and Economic Growth
Human and Natural Environment | Organizational Excellence | Homeland Security
Awards | Papers and Presentations

A Center for Deployment

As we face the realities of the 21st century -- rapidly changing technology, new requirements for security, and continued demands for efficient, cost-effective, and safe transportation -- RSPA's Volpe Center fills a vital role. The Center assesses the needs of the transportation community, evaluates research and development in the technology community, and actively assists in deploying systems in innovative and effective ways.

This issue's Focus article covers the recent implementation of a Volpe-developed vessel communications and tracking network for the Saint Lawrence Seaway. We take great pride in Volpe's Center for Navigation, which has developed several Global Positioning System-based systems to improve navigation in shipping channels. In 1993, a commercial vessel was tracked for the first time in the Seaway with a GPS-based system developed by the Center. From 1995 through 2000, a Volpe team developed and installed a large-scale system for the Panama Canal based on differential GPS (DGPS), which produces highly accurate location data. Recent Volpe efforts in small ports in Honduras and Nicaragua replaced traditional visual navigation aids, such as buoys, with mobile DGPS units that enable navigation in ports and in narrow approach channels during all types of weather. Although they vary in scale, these systems have had similar impacts, including more accurate scheduling, shorter transit time, and lower shipping costs. Such systems can also offer significant safety and security benefits, as they increase maritime situation awareness.

Our staff has found that technologies developed to facilitate operations can also help protect facilities and people. For example, a Volpe team recently implemented the Vessel Identification and Positioning System (VIPS) for the Technical Support Working Group of the DoD's Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office. (See Homeland Security in this issue of Highlights.) Employing navigation technologies developed by the Center to track commercial ships traversing the Panama Canal and the Saint Lawrence Seaway, VIPS is used by the U.S. military to monitor and protect U.S.- flagged ships in domestic and foreign ports. The evolution of these "dual-purpose" technologies is a prime example of Volpe's success as a catalyst and facilitator of innovation.

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