Unmanned Aerial Systems for Transportation Decision Support

Commercial remotely sensed datasets have tremendous value for a broad range of transportation-related activities, but their full potential is often constrained by inadequate temporal resolution, poor spatial resolution, and high acquisition costs. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have the potential to overcome these limitations, radically changing the way remote sensing data are used for transportation planning, operations, maintenance, and program development. Contemporary off the shelf UAS are inexpensive to purchase, easy to operate with proper training, rapidly deployable, and provide data with spatial resolutions that cannot be matched by traditional airborne and spaceborne platforms. This supplemental funding will be used to expand the operational capacity of the UAS portion of this project, addressing the needs of state transportation agencies. This project will apply proven UAS acquisition and analytical capabilities in four categorical areas that have been determined to be of high interest by stakeholders: 1) geomorphic assessment, 2) construction management and phasing, 3) resource allocation during disaster response, and 4) cost decision support. The project team will marry this with a robust outreach and training program that will improve the abilities of state and local transportation planners to integrate UAS data and products into their decision-making and management operations. The activities in all four areas will develop operational solutions with quantifiable results that improve decision making, reduce costs, increase life safety, and provide a measurable impact on existing decision processes, models and resource tasking.

• Record URL:
  http://www.uvm.edu/trc/rapid-exploitation-of-commercial-remotely-sensed-imagery-for-disaster-response-recovery/unmanned-aerial-systems-for-transportation-decision-support/

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $468126
• Contract Numbers:

  OASRTRS -14 -H-UVM

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Singh, Caesar

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Vermont, Burlington

  85 South Waterman Building
  Burlington, VT  United States  05405
• Principal Investigators:

  O'Neil-Dunne, Jarlath

• Start Date: 20140929
• Expected Completion Date: 20160729
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research
• Subprogram: Research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Construction management; Costs; Decision support systems; Disasters and emergency operations; Drones; Geomorphology; Remote sensing; Resource allocation; State departments of transportation; Transportation operations; Transportation planning
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Construction; Data and Information Technology; Finance; Planning and Forecasting; Research; Transportation (General); Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01593654
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: UVM Transportation Center
• Contract Numbers: OASRTRS -14 -H-UVM
• Files: UTC, RiP
• Created Date: Mar 15 2016 1:15PM