Integrating Public and Private Data Sources for Freight Transportation Planning

The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) stipulates that state transportation agencies expand their interest in freight initiatives and modeling to support planning efforts, particularly the evaluation of current and future freight transportation capacity necessary to ensure freight mobility. However, the understanding of freight demand and the evaluation of current and future freight transportation capacity are not only determined by robust models, but are critically contingent on the availability of accurate data. Effective partnerships are clearly needed between the public and private sectors to ensure adequate freight planning and funding of transportation infrastructure at the state and local levels. However, establishing partnerships with firms who are both busy and suspicious of data-sharing, remains a challenge. This study was commissioned by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to explore the feasibility of TxDOT entering into a data-sharing partnership with representatives of the private sector to obtain sample data for use in formulating a strategy for integrating public and private sector data sources. This report summarizes the findings, lessons learned, and recommendations formed from the outreach effort, and provides a prototype freight data architecture that will facilitate the storage, exchange, and integration of freight data through a data-sharing partnership.Texas Department of Transportation Research and Technology Implementation Office P.O. Box 5080 Austin, TX 78763-5080Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

The ZERO: The Zip-tiE RevOlver

The Boise State Microgravity team took part in the EVA Zip Tie Installer challenge. As a part of maintaining the International Space Station (ISS) until 2030, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are inquiring into different device solutions that can install zip-ties fully mechanically and repeatedly by astronauts aboard the ISS during EVA’s. This serves as a solution to the current use of metal wires which are wrapped around pipes and loose wires on the ISS. The Zip-Tie Revolver (ZERO) was created to install zip-ties taking into account the astronaut’s limited dexterity and the goals of reusability with modular components. In order to address the difficulty of the many steps required to install a metal wire around pipes and loose wires, the ZERO was designed with a simple and streamlined operation to bolster effectiveness and usability on EVA’s. At its core, the ZERO is a spring loaded zip tie gun that can propel zip ties around different objects in a microgravity environment