NCRST-E CORRIDOR ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING

NCRST-E focuses research on how to use Remote Sensing and Geospatial Technologies to assist in streamlining environmental assessment processes related to transportation. Since the inception of consortium research in 2000, research activities has been developed based on initial direction and guidance from the US DOT. In the course of the first two years of research which included technical outreach and needs assessment, efforts to better define long-term research directions have led to more specifically defining areas of research for the consortium. To formulate specific research directions and guidance, the US DOT directed the NCRST-E to conduct a workshop on Geospatial Information for Corridor Assessment and Planning (GICAP 2002).

The GICAP 2002 Workshop is a part of the Technical Outreach efforts of the Mississippi State University-led National Consortium on Remote Sensing in Transportation-Environmental Assessment (NCRST-E). The goal of the workshop is to explore how geospatial information of various types can be appropriately used to impact important issues in transportation corridor assessment and planning. The workshop will include invited presentations from researchers, project managers, geospatial data providers, environmental analysts, and decision makers with a goal of distilling common issues and challenges in corridor assessment and planning and matching those issues and challenges with relevant geospatial information and geospatial data processing and analysis algorithms.

Transportation projects can be in preliminary planning and environmental assessment phases for many years while lengthy data collection activities, environmental analyses, assessment of alternatives, assessment of constraints and preliminary design activities take place. It is possible that the timely collection of high resolution remotely sensed data of various types can be used for many early stage processes in the transportation project life cycle. The GICAP 2002 workshop will seek to address many of these and other issues related to Geospatial Information for Corridor Assessment and Planning. The presentations, panel discussions, and resultant summary recommendations from the workshop will provide important guidance to the formulation of a collaborative research and development agenda for NCRST-E’s future research efforts in corridor assessment and planning.