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Interactive Web-based Platform for Analyzing Freight Data – Phase I

Proposal Summary and Objectives

The efficient movement of good and timely provision of services is critical to the economic and sustainable development of a region. Public decision makers require a comprehensive picture of freight movements to understand how freight transportation supports economic development, how land use affects freight transportation, and how transportation infrastructure supply impacts private sector freight and commercial activity. The freight data needed to provide such insights are available from many public and private sources. However, the datasets may vary significantly in terms of collection method, data quality, existence of gaps, availability or timeframe (daily, monthly, and quarterly), format (shape files, documents, tables, etc.) and suitability. The lack of coordination among freight data vendors not only prevents the seamless integration of data sources but also disables data-driven decision making. The need for frameworks that can help integrate and analyze information from existing freight databases is therefore crucial. Under the above context, the proposed research seeks to develop a user-friendly, interactive, web-based prototype platform that takes advantage of recent advances in spatial data analysis, big data and user-centered visualization to integrate freight data across different private and public databases for the purpose of improving freight planning activities and data driven decision making.

Funding Amount: $100,000
Status: Complete
Duration: Dec. 8, 2018 - Dec. 11, 2019