Bharathwaj Sankaran

Approach to Classifying Freight Data Elements Across Multiple Data Sources

Multiple freight data sources, both public and private, are available to practitioners for understanding freight demand and evaluating current and future freight transportation capacity. The challenge of working with multiple data sources is dealing with the syntactic and semantic heterogeneity in these sources. To assist practitioners in addressing this challenge, a unified perspective from which data elements from multiple sources can be examined is proposed. The role-based classification schema (RBCS) organizes and classifies data elements within their respective parent databases such that similar data elements across multiple sources can be grouped. RBCS is based on two levels of classification: a primary group that characterizes data elements according to the type of object that they describe and a secondary group that differentiates between elements that identify objects and those that describe features related to the objects. When similar data elements are ascertained, the subsequent process of resolving syntactic and semantic heterogeneity becomes much clearer, especially with hundreds of data elements. The proposed schema was validated by classifying 1,624 data elements from 28 freight data sources, and it was compared with the existing mnemonic CODMRT, which defined key attributes of freight-related shipments: commodity, origin, destination, mode, route, and time. Examples of applications in the areas of data bridging and multidatabase querying are also presented.

Civil Integrated Management for Highway Infrastructure: Case Studies and Lessons Learned

The use of information modeling and digital data for highway projects has seen a considerable surge over the past decade. These tools have enhanced the predictability and performance of several tasks in the project delivery process. This study explores the implementation of civil integrated management (CIM) practices in four case studies and documents the lessons learned to enhance CIM inclusion in project delivery processes. CIM encompasses the system of interdependent technologies and practices that facilitate collection, management, and utilization of digital information for project delivery and asset management processes. CIM is an emerging practice, and studies concerning integration of CIM technologies with project life cycle are limited. Through case studies of four highway projects, this study emphasizes the standards and processes that played a vital role in utilizing CIM technologies for contract documentation, design coordination, construction automation, and project management. The two small-scale projects investigated as part of this study demonstrate that pilot initiatives could be successfully carried out to harvest best practices in overcoming contract and legal challenges while embracing new technologies in agencies’ workflow. The two large-scale projects indicate that with the owner’s participation and expertise, the role of CIM technologies can be further enhanced toward performing project management functions. The lessons learned from the case studies are organized to provide a synthesis of process and organizational considerations that would enhance the agencywide adoption of CIM technologies.