Exciting opportunity for ITS work: a new NSF and DOT partnership offers grants for innovative, long-term, basic transportation research on Intelligent Transportation Systems - National Science Foundation, Department of Transportation

Public Roads, May-June, 2002 by Miriam Heller, Thomas F. Humphrey, William Jones, Priscilla Nelson, Jeff Paniati

Advances in information technologies are radically changing the way Americans provide business services, manufacture products, educate, recreate, and communicate. As information and sensing technologies become ubiquitous in transportation systems, equally radical changes in how we move people and goods can be anticipated. These changes will either worsen or improve current trends in surface transportation: growing congestion, declining safety; deteriorating road infrastructure, constrained land use, use of nonrenewable fuels, and degraded environmental quality. Information and communications technologies in surface transportation therefore constitute an important area of long-term, strategic research.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in partnership with the private sector and academia has been harnessing these technologies through the development of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). DOT sponsors applied research in a number of areas related to surface transportation systems and participates in developing agendas for new short-range, applied research. These programs tend to mirror the five-year planning horizon governing the Intermodal Surface Transportation and Equity Acts, as well as the mission-orientation of the sponsoring agencies.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports fundamental research in transportation on a fairly small scale and not within the context of a dedicated program. Program-aligned, unsolicited proposals or proposals for junior faculty are typically the mode. NSF's Directorate for Engineering has funded surface transportation research in dynamic simulation, operations, control, management commercial transportation, networks, signalization, and general theoretical systems optimization. Engineering also has funded research in basic highway design and materials. Other Directorates support transportation research in facility location, economics, safety, and human factors.

At the University of Illinois at Chicago in October 2000, a joint NSF and DOT workshop explored the results of this parallel pursuit of basic and applied research. The workshop participants discussed long-term, basic research needs in surface transportation systems. The two-day workshop served to coalesce current thinking among more than 30 representatives of academia, the private sector, and the Federal government from a variety of disciplines.

A Vision to Launch the Research Program

The workshop defined a 25-year vision that formed the basis for an interagency agreement between NSF and I)OT to move forward with a funded research program:

"We will have a customer-responsive, managed, safe, efficient, and integrated transportation system for the movement of people, services and goods. Advances in information technology will enable the system to be both flexible and optimal through productive operations and control. Communication technologies and advanced traveler information systems will provide optimal information and knowledge to the customer; and support equity; mobility and accessibility. This seamless transportation system will preserve privacy and individual rights, provide choices, and be environmentally sustainable."

A goal was defined to provide all customers with the following:

"No matter who or where you are, you will have in your hand the knowledge and ability to choose, make, and pay for a safe, efficient, cost-effective trip or multiple trip segments for you, your family, or your goods to any location in the world. This will be the case whether the trip is to or from home or work; to or from any recreation or business location; or for any other purpose."

The workshop participants concluded that a new "community of researchers" in both technical and nontechnical disciplines must be attracted to surface transportation research. These disciplines include computer science and engineering, social sciences (human, environmental, and economic factors), operations research, systems engineering, telecommunications, as well as basic science and engineering.

Subsequent to the workshop, NSF released on March 8, 2001, a solicitation (NSF 01-087) entitled "National Science Foundation/U. S. DOT Partnership for Exploratory Research on Information and Communications Systems for Surface Transportation (ICSST)."The solicitation is intentionally broad (see "Goal of NSF 01-087").

Researchers were asked to think beyond today's solutions and to "offer substantial enhancements in capacity utilization, safety, resource use, and environmental impact," ... "expand and verify our understanding of the impact of planning, engineering, and operations policies on surface transportation systems," ... and "seek dramatic breakthroughs in fundamental concepts of surface transportation."

In other words, researchers were encouraged to think out-of-the-box and propose new concepts that might come to fruition within a 10-to 25-year horizon. With the fundamental technologies that underpin ITS, information technology, and communications changing so rapidly and independently of the transportation community, researchers might have been expected to be hesitant to address such a far-reaching request.