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Volpe Center Highlights - Summer 2005

Director's Notes

Director's Notes | Dr. Kaveeshwar: First RITA Administrator | Focus | Safety
Mobility | Security | Contributions to TRB | Published and Presented

Cross-Cutting Capabilities Applied to Transportation Issues

In this issue of the Volpe Highlights, we introduce Dr. Ashok Kaveeshwar, our new RITA Administrator. We are pleased to welcome him. In his recent visits to the Volpe Center, our senior staff has briefed Dr. Kaveeshwar on our work here, and he is providing leadership and guidance that we know will increase our effectiveness as a systems center for transportation innovation.

With this issue we also start a new series that features the Center's ability to address transportation problems in innovative ways that cut across traditional disciplines and encourage the transfer of lessons learned from one transportation mode to another as required. We believe that this capability is a function of our systems approach to transportation issues - our ability to perceive and address the larger questions even as we focus on specific problems.

As the transportation field evolves, problems and their solutions become more complex. The rapid introduction of new structures, materials, technologies, and operational practices has necessitated a prompt response from transportation researchers, and the research requirements to support these changes have become more intricate. The Volpe Center's flexible structure has enabled us to integrate resources to address these emerging issues. Over time, clusters of technical specialists from various disciplines have come together to address issues that affect multiple modes of transportation.

Selected examples of cross-cutting technical capability teams include: biomechanics, environmental policy and remediation, navigation technologies, human factors, information technology systems, professional capacity building, safety data analysis, traffic management, and transportation planning. By leveraging these teams, the Center promotes synergy and is able to provide benefits to multiple modes.

This issue of Highlights introduces a relatively new cluster of capabilities in organizational development. This discipline focuses on the huge demands that rapid change puts on an organization and its people, and presents ways to address those changes effectively. The Focus article describes ways in which this discipline can help government agencies, and provides specific examples of targeted approaches to solving organizational problems. Future Focus articles will address the work of other cross-cutting capability teams.

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