By the end of Lesson 1, you should be able to:
Among the many areas and disciplines to which GIS has been applied, transportation has been particularly fertile ground, and the development of specialized GIS applications has been an area which has seen a lot of activity. This important interdisciplinary field is commonly referred to as GIS-T. The significance of this field is evidenced by the fact that there are two conferences devoted to it, one annual and one biennial. Each year the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) sponsors the annual GIS for Transportation Symposium [1]. The symposium draws over 400 registrants from federal, state, and local government and the private sector. The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) sponsors a conference called GIS in Transit [2]which is held every other year. The 10th GIS in Transit conference was held last year.
A key reason that GIS-T is so important is that transportation is a huge industry upon which many other industries depend. In 2015, the federal government spent 85 billion dollars on transportation-related initiatives. That represented 2.22% of our total federal budget for 2015. The National Priority Project (NPP) website [3] presents some interesting charts which put federal transportation spending in perspective.
In their own words, the NPP “is a national non-profit, non-partisan research organization dedicated to making complex federal budget information transparent and accessible so people can prioritize and influence how their tax dollars are spent.” Their website also offers a number of very educational videos [4] if you’d like to understand our national budget, deficit, and debt.
In addition to federal dollars, there are many billions of state and local dollars spent on transportation. If you want to see how states are using transportation dollars, the Track State Dollars website [5] gives you access to data for each state.
In the U.S., federal agencies have helped to promote GIS use for transportation analysis purposes through geospatially-enabled initiatives such as the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER program and the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS). Software vendors have continually updated and improved their GIS products to include additional GIS-T functionality and tools. Today, GIS-T is an integral part of transportation operations around the world.
The natural synergy between GIS and transportation is at least in part due to the fact that transportation is inherently spatial, and while it’s true that GIS plays an important role in transportation, one can also argue that transportation plays an important role in GIS. Transportation features are frequently included on maps for context and orientation even when the fundamental purpose of the map has little or nothing to do with transportation. Take a few minutes to review this recent blog [6] from GeoSpatial World which briefly examines some important applications of GIS to transportation. In this course, we'll cover these application areas as well as many others.
Broadly speaking, the field of transportation is concerned with the transport of people and goods. To appreciate the value that GIS brings to transportation it is necessary to develop an understanding of the various forms of transportation that exist and also the types of activities and problems which those in the field need to address.
The different ways that people and freight can be transported are referred to as transportation modes. There are many different modes of transportation, and they can be differentiated and categorized in a number of ways. At a high level, we can divide transportation into the categories of air, land, sea, and space. We could further divide the land-based transportation into road, rail, pedestrian, bike, and pipeline, although one might rightfully argue that pipelines can run under the sea. Transportation modes are not always mutually exclusive and the specific modes we talk about often depend on the situation at hand. There have been many GIS applications which have been designed for a specific mode or for a group of closely related modes.
Just as we can categorize transportation according to the many modes of transportation which exist, we can think about transportation in terms of the many processes and activities which are performed in order to manage transportation infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Some of these processes cut across modes and others are specific to a single mode or a few modes. These processes and activities include:
GIS-T plays an important role in enhancing the manner in which transportation organizations accomplish these processes and activities and, in some cases, allow organizations to perform functions which would simply not be possible without spatial technologies. GIS-T applications support evaluation of different scenarios, provide objective data for decision-making purposes, and promote the visualization of conditions.
GIS-T utilizes many mainstream geospatial tools and methods but it also employs a number of techniques which were borne out of the specialized needs of the transportation industry. These include:
We will learn more about these techniques in upcoming lessons.
This week, you’ll take some time to get to know perhaps the most significant transportation organization in the United States, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). The USDOT (established in 1966) is a cabinet-level department within the U.S. government which employs about 55,000 people and is responsible for maintaining and advancing the nation’s transportation systems and infrastructure.
A key function of the USDOT is to develop programs which implement transportation-related statutes. One of the most important statutes the USDOT is tasked with implementing relates to the funding of surface transportation. The latest surface transportation statute is known as the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in December 2015.
The USDOT is comprised of a number of operating administrations and bureaus, each of which specializes in a specific area of transportation. Some of these divisions, along with the area of transportation they are responsible for, are listed below:
We’ll take a closer look at some of these USDOT divisions in later lessons.
Spend some time looking at the USDOT’s website [7] and try to learn some more about the organization and some of their current initiatives and activities. Also, spend some time learning about the Smart City Challenge which the USDOT kicked off in December 2015. This challenge was designed to promote innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges our cities face and offered $50 million to the winning city, $40 million of which came from the USDOT and $10 million from a private partner. Here is a video where the USDOT provided information to city mayors across the county. (Note: the presentation doesn't begin until about 10 minutes into the recording and you may want to skip ahead to the 18-minute mark when former Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx begins to speak).
The winner, announced in June 2016, was Columbus, Ohio. I think you’ll agree that their winning pitch (see above) exhibited an impressive use of multimedia.
Take a look at these links to see what's happened since the award was made in June 2016:
One of my goals for this course is to promote meaningful interactions between all of us as we cover topics in GIS-T over the next 10 weeks and to lay the framework for building relationships which will extend beyond the end of the course. Throughout the course, you will have the opportunity to get to know your classmates and me a little better. As a first step, you will create a video autobiography so we can begin to get to know you. In later lessons, you will spend time in one-on-one video chats with your classmates getting to know each other better.
Our next webinar will be with Mr. Michael Ratcliffe. Michael is Assistant Division Chief for Geographic Standards, Criteria, Research, and Quality in the Census Bureau’s Geography Division, where he is responsible for geographic area concepts and criteria, address and geospatial data quality, and research activities. During his tenure at the Census Bureau, he has worked in both the Geography and Population Divisions, on a variety of geographic area programs, including urban and rural areas, metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, and other statistical geographic areas, and has led staff engaged in product development and dissemination. In addition to his work at the Census Bureau, he is an adjunct professor at George Washington University, where he teaches Population Geography. Prior to that appointment, he was an adjunct instructor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Mr. Ratcliffe holds degrees in geography from the University of Oxford and the University of Maryland.
The Census Bureau defines many different geographic areas which can be used to organize and aggregate data. The areas the Census Bureau uses can be divided into those which are legally defined and those which are not. The Census Bureau refers to non-legally defined areas as statistical areas.
Nation
Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and Related Statistical Areas
Urban Areas
ZIP Code Tabulation Areas
Regions
Divisions
States
School Districts
Congressional Districts
Consolidated Cities
Planning Regions
Economic Places
Estates
Urban Growth Areas
State Legislative Districts
Public Use Microdata Areas
Places
Counties
Voting Districts
Traffic Analysis Zones
County Subdivisions
Subminor Civil Divisions
Census Tracts
Block Groups
Census Blocks
AIANNH Areas (American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian Areas)
Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and Related Statistical Areas
Urban Areas
ZIP Code Tabulation Areas
School Districts
Congressional Districts
Consolidated Cities
Planning Regions
Economic Places
Estates
Urban Growth Areas
State Legislative Districts
Public Use Microdata Areas
Places
Voting Districts
Traffic Analysis Zones
County Subdivisions
Subminor Civil Divisions
In this lesson you:
If there is anything in the Lesson 1 materials about which you would like to ask a question or provide a comment, submit a posting to the Lesson 1 Questions and Comments discussion. Also, review others' postings to this discussion and respond if you have something to offer or if you are able to help.
Links
[1] http://www.gis-t.org/
[2] http://www.urisa.org/education-events/gis-in-transit-conference/
[3] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
[4] http://www.nationalpriorities.org/videos/
[5] http://www.trackstatedollars.org/
[6] https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/gis-in-transportation/
[7] https://www.transportation.gov/
[8] mailto:smartcitychallenge@dot.gov
[9] http://www.transportation.gov/smartcity
[10] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_sNVW9aVZoSfmu5sDI3rfg
[11] http://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/Smart%20City%20Challenge%20Lessons%20Learned.pdf
[12] https://www.columbus.gov/smartcolumbus/projects/
[13] http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-columbus-ohio-parlayed-50-million-into-500-million-for-a-smart-city-transportation-network/
[14] https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/webatlas/