Transportation Research Circular E-C278, 2021 Innovations in Freight Data Workshop, March 2022

(2022) Transportation Research Circular E-C278, 2021 Innovations in Freight Data Workshop, March 2022. Transportation, Department of

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Abstract

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) Standing Freight Data Committee initiated the third workshop on innovations in freight data to bring together freight data users and decision-makers to learn about and share the latest applications that leverage new and maturing data sources for improving decision-making. This event brought together traditional freight planning stakeholders with data and technology innovators from related areas to explore opportunities to advance the state-of-the-practice, offering an interactive format to engage in productive dialogue. During the virtual workshop, on September 21–23, 2021, 186 freight community members—including transportation professionals from transportation planning agencies, consultants, industry experts, and academic researchers—participated in the Third Innovations in Freight Data Workshop. In 2017, the first Innovations in Freight Data Workshop highlighted “big data” as a potential new data resource for freight planning, freight operations and mobility, and visualizations for communicating freight issues and solutions for decision-makers. The event brought together traditional freight planning stakeholders with emerging technology innovators to look for opportunities to interact. Two years later, the 2019 event built upon these opportunities, bringing the stakeholders with recent experiences with big data for freight—and individuals, organizations, and agencies—to evaluate progress with new data sources and new methods and to discuss next steps to meet existing and future challenges. Now, the third in the series expanded the focus to highlight how freight data is used to make decisions. This workshop report follows the program agenda and includes summaries of the presentations made by each panel member, augmented with audience questions, comments, reflections on advances in data sources and the decisions they support, along with new challenges. Topics covered in the various panels, interactive posters, and traditional posters included new uses of Global Positioning System (GPS) trace data, new machine learning techniques, new uses of existing freight data, and a variety of new approaches for collecting and analyzing freight data. A copy of the program with links to the presentations is available at https://trb.secureplatform.com/a/page/InnovationsFreightData/Virtual_Program.