Download or read book Extended Comparison Tool for Major Highway Projects written by James H. Lambert and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Virginia Transportation Act signed into law in April 2000, more than $10 billion would have been invested in highway construction, public transportation, airports, and ports during the following 6 years. However, recent budgetary constraints will result in a delay in investing more than $2 billion in road projects for more than a decade. In the current study, a previously developed comparison tool was extended to bring quantitative evidence of safety and categorical evidence of broad motivations to planners, engineers, and the public in comparing the benefits of proposed transportation projects. The extended tool developed in the current study provides visual devices for presenting multifaceted information about project attributes. Policymakers and planners may find the presentation useful in assessing what types of projects are being undertaken and what projects to prefer to others. The extended tool represents project information including cost, average daily traffic, and crash rates for comparison and prioritization of the 1,500 candidate projects that constitute the development plan of Virginia highways. The extended tool is flexible to accommodate applications such as project selection (planning) and programming. Several sources of information include the crash databases of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and project plans for districts and localities. The extended tool enables planners to identify principal motivations for various projects based on categories defined by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. The tool introduces summary reports of criteria including project aggregate costs and counts of projects with particular motivations, facilitating system-level analyses and project ranking. The summary reports can be useful to interpret outcomes of human deliberation or multicriteria rating and ranking processes, some of which are demonstrated in this study in the body of the report and in a substantial appendix. The major innovation of the extended comparison tool is its ability to synthesize the relevant quantitative and categorical information on a large and diverse portfolio of highway investments, bringing more evidence to the table earlier in the planning process. Three case studies demonstrate the application of the extended comparison tool in short-, medium-, and long-term transportation plans. These case studies are the VDOT-Culpeper District Transportation Development Plan (a 6-year plan), long-range financially constrained plans of selected small Virginia localities, and the long-range plan of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. The incremental data to assess over 100 projects in a VDOT District Six-Year Plan were collected in 90 minutes, providing an advantage over typical methods that can require several hours or more per project. Recommendations are given for implementation of the extended comparison tool and further development of the software prototype.
Download or read book Computational Models of Risks to Infrastructure written by D. Skanata and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2007-08-08 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication deals with modeling of infrastructure risk. The objective, exploring different methodologies and related applications, recognized four major topics: Complex Models; Simulation Models; Distributional Models; and Deterministic Models. Focus is on the following issues: the state-of-the-art and practice, gaps between the arts and practices, ways to bridge the gaps, and future research directions. In the first chapter, papers can be found on Computational Nonlinear Models of Risk Assessment, Risk-Based Evaluation of Safety and Security Programs in Critical Infrastructure and Risk Assessment of Modes of Terrorist Attack. One of the papers in the chapter on Simulation Models is on Computational Models for the Simulation of Evacuations following Infrastructure Failures and Terrorist Incidents. Bayesian Belief Nets for Discrete and Continuous Variables and Development of Risk Based Software for Analysis of Power Engineering Accidents are two titles of papers in the third chapter of the book on Distributional Models. Finally, the fourth chapter on Deterministic Models focuses on Environmental Risk Ranking and more.
Download or read book Managing Critical Infrastructure Risks written by Igor Linkov and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-09-17 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a state-of-the-science approach to current environmental security threats and infrastructure vulnerabilities. It emphasizes beliefs that the convergence of seemingly disparate viewpoints and often uncertain and limited information is possible only by using one or more available risk assessment methodologies and decision-making tools such as risk assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).
Download or read book Factors that Support the Planning programming Linkage written by Cambridge Systematics and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2007 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report contains a list of 39 factors that influence the linkage between programming and long-range plans. This list was developed from recent literature and extensive interviews with agency staff and other experts in the field. While the discussion of the critical factors is helpful, the report takes this topic one step further by providing suggested paths for improving the linkage between planning and programming.
Download or read book Gravel Roads written by Ken Skorseth and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this manual is to provide clear and helpful information for maintaining gravel roads. Very little technical help is available to small agencies that are responsible for managing these roads. Gravel road maintenance has traditionally been "more of an art than a science" and very few formal standards exist. This manual contains guidelines to help answer the questions that arise concerning gravel road maintenance such as: What is enough surface crown? What is too much? What causes corrugation? The information is as nontechnical as possible without sacrificing clear guidelines and instructions on how to do the job right.
Download or read book Benefits Estimates of Highway Capital Improvements with Uncertain Parameters written by James Hamilton Lambert and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report warrants consideration in the development of goals, performance measures, and standard cost-benefit methodology required of transportation agencies by the Virginia 2006 Appropriations Act. The Virginia Department of Transportation has begun to implement a quantitative methodology as an aid to prioritizing highway construction projects in four categories: interstate, primary, urban, and rural. The methodology adopts fifteen quantitative metrics including level of service (LOS), volume-to-capacity ratio, traffic flow, intermodal access, crash rate, emergency route access, heavy truck usage, unemployment rate, environmental issues, right-of-way use, use of alternative transportation modes, bridge sufficiency rating, and cost-effectiveness. The results of the methodology are used by executive review teams to negotiate, interpret, and support decisions regarding the selection of construction projects for funding in a $1.8 billion construction program. This report describes an effort to extend the current prioritization methodology via modeling and uncertainty analysis of the risk reductions, benefits, and costs that are expected of candidate construction projects. The report (1) develops monetized estimates of benefits in several categories including crashes avoided, travel time saved, fuel uses avoided, and emissions avoided; (2) compares the estimates of benefits to the estimates of project costs, representing the uncertainty of the results as numerical intervals; and (3) compares the results to the results of the prioritization methodology that is currently in use. The major contribution of the report is the assembly of existing and new methods of benefits assessment via an interval analysis of uncertainty that enables a prioritization to proceed with sparse data on a large number of potential projects. With the interval analysis of uncertainty, a decision maker is provided with a sound basis to recommend that more data are needed or that existing available data are sufficient to distinguish among the potential projects. The developed methodology is demonstrated with project data from VDOT's Northern Virginia District using a database of performance criteria of 53 candidate projects ranging in cost from $2 million to $130 million. A prototype of a prioritization software was developed along with the report for the support of future analyses.
Download or read book Development of a Methodology to Coordinate and Prioritize Multimodal Investment Networks written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the nation, there are opportunities to improve coordination among transportation modal agencies, including aviation, transit, ports, highway, rail, pedestrian, and bicycle modes. Virginia's statewide multimodal transportation planning effort VTrans2025 addresses multimodal coordination of transportation investments in the state. Virginia's Secretary of Transportation submitted a final report of the VTrans2025 effort to the Virginia General Assembly in November 2004. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate an analytical methodology that could aid efforts such as this to coordinate and prioritize multimodal investments. The methodology developed can help decision makers to identify and prioritize proposed multimodal investment networks (MINs). These are large-scale coordinated investments in transportation projects across modes. The body of this report describes relevant literature and provides an overview of the developed methodology: (1) prioritization of the MINs, and (2) statistical comparison of modal plans. The analytical methodology developed will be of interest to multimodal transportation planning efforts across the nation, particularly where there is a need for systematic evidence-based approaches to coordinating the efforts of modal transportation agencies. Most data in the report are presented solely for purposes of demonstrating the methodology. The methodology developed in this project fosters improved coordination in planning and programming transportation investments across modal agencies. The potential benefits of the methodology include identification of lower-cost investment alternatives when considering multiple modes relative to considering only single modes to meet a particular travel demand; selection and programming of multimodal solutions that have the highest performance relative to the available or required levels of investment; and increased transparency and accountability of the multimodal agencies for the uses of funding that can be allocated across multiple transportation modes. The costs of implementing the methodology developed in this study are minimal and include one-time training of staff of the modal agencies in the use of the identification and priority-setting methodology and software demonstrated in the current study; and regular interaction and dialogue among the staff of the modal agencies that are involved in the identification and prioritization of investments across modes
Download or read book Report written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Virginia State Documents written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Place Based Evaluation for Integrated Land Use Management written by Johan Woltjer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis placed on local and regional integration in major planning projects and infrastructure development including roads, rail and waterways. This emphasis is not only on integrating various projects, but also integrating them with related issues such as housing, industry, environment and water. In other words, land-use planning and infrastructure management have become more spatially-oriented. This book brings together experts in the fields of spatial planning, land-use and infrastructure management to explore the emerging agenda of spatially-oriented integrated evaluation. It weaves together the latest theories, case studies, methods, policy and practice to examine and assess the values, impacts, benefits and the overall success in integrated land-use management. In doing so, the book clarifies the nature and roles of evaluation and puts forward guidance for future policy and practice.
Download or read book Contemporary Ergonomics and Human Factors 2011 written by Martin Anderson and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The broad and developing scope of ergonomics - the application of scientific knowledge to improve people‘s interaction with products, systems and environments - has been illustrated for 25 years by the books which make up the Contemporary Ergonomics series. This book presents the proceedings of the international conference on Ergonomics and Human F
Download or read book Public Roads written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sensors Application in Agriculture written by Dimitrios S. Paraforos and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-11-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novel technologies are playing an important role in the development of crop and livestock farming and have the potential to be the key drivers of sustainable intensification of agricultural systems. In particular, new sensors are now available with reduced dimensions, reduced costs, and increased performances, which can be implemented and integrated in production systems, providing more data and eventually an increase in information. It is of great importance to support the digital transformation, precision agriculture, and smart farming, and to eventually allow a revolution in the way food is produced. In order to exploit these results, authoritative studies from the research world are still needed to support the development and implementation of new solutions and best practices. This Special Issue is aimed at bringing together recent developments related to novel sensors and their proved or potential applications in agriculture.
Download or read book Road User and Mitigation Costs in Highway Pavement Projects written by David Leonard Lewis and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 1999 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This synthesis report will be of interest to transportation agency planners; design, construction, and maintenance engineers; and administrators, managers, economists, and other decisionmakers involved in programming highway pavement projects. This synthesis describes current practice with regard to road user and mitigation costs in highway pavement projects. Information for the synthesis was collected by surveying U.S. and Canadian transportation agencies and by conducting a literature search of both domestic and foreign publications. This report of the Transportation Research Board provides detailed information on the various methods employed by transportation agencies to estimate user costs. The advantages and disadvantages of each are reported. Information on the various components of user costs (that is, time related, vehicle operating, safety, and environmental costs) is also included. In addition, the study reports on the various mitigation strategies available to agencies to reduce user costs. Information is also provided on how user costs and mitigation strategies have been applied to evaluate different alternatives; and how uncertainties, political considerations, and quality control contribute to the decisionmaking process.
Download or read book Guidance Notebooks for the Environmental Assessment of Airport Development Projects Notebook 1 Airport planning and environmental assessment written by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Engineering Economic Analysis Practices for Highway Investment written by Michael J. Markow and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2012 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 424: Engineering Economic Analysis Practices for Highway Investment explores how U.S. transportation agencies have applied engineering economics--benefit–cost analyses and similar procedures--to decisions on highway investments.
