Bringing Visualization to Transportation Research Board Meeting

By Art Kalinski

Two weeks ago I gave a presentation, at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual meeting. This is one of those mega-meetings attended by almost anyone involved in the transportation related professions. TRB is part of the National Research Council jointly administered by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. TRB’s active members include more than 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers. The program is supported by state transportation departments and federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The TRB annual meeting is huge — 11,000 attendees spread out among eight D.C. area hotels in four main venues. TRB is involved in every possible aspect of transportation: public transportation including highways, mass transit, aviation and marine, and freight movement by rail, water and pipelines. With more than 4,000 presentations, it reminded me a lot of the ESRI Users Conference — absolutely impossible to see and hear it all.

The presentations ran the gamut from political and financial, engineering and construction to advanced research into safety, human factors, energy and the environment. As you would expect there were many presentations that were Greek to me, as I’m sure some of the geospatial ones were Greek to other attendees. There were a lot of engineering/construction-related sessions. A significant number of advanced research presentations dealt with statistical analysis of factors related to highway safety, including a heavy emphasis on the mind-eye interaction. Even the poster sessions were tough to comprehend, with a lot of statistical analysis covering human factors related to safe highways. Although I had calculus and calculus-based statistical courses, it hurts my head to see a lot of integral signs in a poster. The learning curve to understand the work is just too tough in a “drive-by” viewing.

Several sessions dealt with FAA GIS and the NextGen air control system in particular. See the column on Airport GIS for more details and to understand where we are headed in aviation. The GIS-related presentations were concentrated in a track under the broader concept of Virtual Design and Construction (VDC). These sessions were organized by Lance Parve, MSCE of the Wisconsin DOT, Charles Hixon of Bergmann Associates and Kevin Gilson of Parsons Brinckerhoff. They did an exceptional job of tying together visualization, GIS, CAD and BIM with a focus on interoperability in final construction.

My attendance was prompted by a presentation I did in August at the once-every-5-year TRB Visualization Symposium. The conference committee invited three presenters out of 120 to speak at the TRB Annual Meeting, so I was pleased to be one of the three. I spoke about the benefits of oblique imagery and related 3D models for planning, public safety and public involvement meetings.

I wrapped up my presentation by highlighting the superb example of a 3D web application for public involvement visualization built by Fairfax County under the leadership of Tom Conry.

Visit the Fairfax County visualization website to experience this interactive site first hand.

Combining GIS and GPS technology, David Brown of Delcan explained how his firm kept track of quality control inspection results using Trimble GeoXT GIS GPS Data Collectors. His team of inspectors recorded each inspection point and inspection results in a GIS. The collection and creation of the GIS database was accomplished quickly and efficiently using the GeoXTs to capture the location and inspection values in one step. They also used cameras to record problems and bar codes/readers to speed data entry. At left is a GIS plot of all the data points. The GIS analysis tools helped identify clusters of poor samples that signaled the start of quality issuesso they could be corrected early in the construction process.

There were sessions on LiDAR point cloud captures and converters to 3D models. A very impressive example was TopoDOT by Certainty 3D is a MicroStation application for extracting topography and digital models from point clouds. The system tool suite extracts ground topography quickly and accurately from airborne, mobile or terrestrial point clouds and calibrated images. It then extracts breaklines, elevations, cross-sections, and other DTM componentsaccording to project requirements.

Not surprising is that the common thread was a path to BIM models. Civil engineers have adopted BIM models aggressively and all this technology has led to VDC (Virtual Design and Construction) a technology wave that is revolutionizing the construction industry. In March 2011, I wrote about how even Granite Counter Tops were being measured, digitized and the digital design models fed directly into the digital controlled stone cutting machines to fabricate the tops quickly and accurately. The same kind of process is revolutionizing civil engineering.

Back in the Paleozoic era, when I was in college, I worked part time in a machine shop. Traditional machining was done by moving rotating cutting tool across metal blanks to create objects described in mechanical drawings.The machinist did this by manually turning operating wheels that adjusted the cutting tool to fabricate the part according to the design blueprint. Early automation at that time, called Numerical Control, used digitally controlled motors to move the same cutting tools according to predefined paths to make the same parts. There was considerable time spent manually programming the machines to do the jobs. Current technology, just like the granite cutting system, goes directly from the digital design to fabrication of the finished product.

The same process is being done on a mega scale with bulldozers and other heavy earth-moving machines. You may remember that a number of years ago farmers started using aerial CIR imagery to map soil and water conditions of their land. They then used GPS to do precision farming by metering the optimal distribution of fertilizer based on mapped water content and the location of their tractor relative to the GIS data. The same kind of GPS machine control has been perfected by companies like Trimble and John Deere.

On the right is a bulldozer that is accomplishing its work no differently than a machine shop milling machine or precision farming tractor. There are GPS receivers mounted on each end of the dozer’s blade. The operator in the cab can be guided by the CAD image or turn over steering and blade depth control to the automated system. There is no longer a need to place wood marker stakes and constantly survey the progress of the excavation. The bull dozer operator is clearing the land at double speed guided by GPS and a GIS/CAD/BIM 3D model.

It’s strange seeing this kind of automation and precision in heavy earth moving equipment, but this type of technology is making inroads into all phases of construction. So next time you pass a major construction site, see how many GPS receivers you can spot and appreciate the GIS link.