Appendix C - Research Topic 1109

Appendix C – Research Topic

BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT

Federal Highway Administration
Office of Acquisition and Grants Management
Exploratory Advanced Research (EAR) Program 2027 Solicitation – Data Science for Highway Transportation Research
.Note: Concept papers may be submitted at any time, through the closing date of the research topic.
The transportation industry like many other industries is facing disruptive increases in data collection, creation, and transmission along with increases in computational capabilities. For transportation a particular limitation is the increased proportion of proprietary data relative to public data. Additionally, many public data classes are isolated, difficult to discover, or include incomplete documentation limiting their potential for use by researchers and students. In addition to limited access to research-ready data in comparison to the amount of potential data that could increase traffic safety and roadway travel reliability for all travelers in the U.S., the federal government, state departments of transportation, and local transportation agencies face a shortage of data experts.
The rapid changes in data combined with the noted challenges provide an opportunity to advance broad public goals in highway transportation including safety and reliability provided there is expertise that can apply emerging data science methods to transportation data. Accordingly, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has an interest in increasing the amount of well documented highway transportation data that are available for researchers and students as well as increasing the pipeline of data scientists that support FHWA and the highway industry throughout their careers. The FHWA vision is to build a data science community for highway transportation that is sustainable and can become self-supporting after the initial period of federal funding.

The objectives of the research are to
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Engage and expand the community of researchers interested in applying emerging and advanced data methods for highway transportation research.

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Demonstrate the potential of emerging and exploratory data analytic techniques for highway transportation.

The following are outside the scope of this research project •

Purchase of Information Technology (IT) hardware

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Integration of IT systems

Recognizing the complexity of data in highway transportation – in terms of the variety of data formats, sources, and uses – FHWA anticipates breakthrough research for data science would