TRB Transportation Research Circular E-C106: Environmental Geospatial Information for Transportation summarizes a May 3-4, 2006, peer exchange that took place in Washington, D.C. The report focuses on environmental stewardship, streamlining, and sustainable growth; the importance of effective collaboration; and building capacity for data management and sharing.

Geographic information system (GIS) applications have long been in use by natural resource organizations as a way to display and analyze relationships between attributes across large
geographic areas. Transportation organizations have been using GIS applications to improve decision making for at least 20 years.

As use of GIS has evolved, so have expectations: GIS has become a means to communicate information among diverse agencies in planning and project decisions. Evolving expectations present issues related to integrating diverse spatial data from a variety of sources, and fostering collaboration among data providers and data users. This Circular documents the second of two Peer Exchange workshops aimed at addressing these issues.

Individuals from state and federal natural resource agencies, regulatory and permitting agencies, and nongovernmental organizations participated. Mid-Atlantic states participants with expertise in information technology, geospatial information technologies, and environmental applications in transportation came together to explore successful applications of environmental geospatial information for transportation, discuss common approaches and issues, and consider methods to facilitate adoption by other organizations.

External Links:

More Information: www.trb.org/news/blurb_detail.asp?id=6963

Further Reading:

Transportation Research Circular Number E-C106: Environmental Geospatial Information for Transportation