ARC Technology Transfer Initiative - UTC

The objective of this initiative is to build on the momentum of the ARC competition and its message: New Methods-New Materials-New Thinking by inspiring transportation and natural resource communities and the next generation of practitioners through a series of activities over the course of twelve months. This initiative intends to acknowledge the virtues of the winning design while celebrating the promising ideas of all finalist designs. It also strives to keep innovation at the forefront of our collective thinking about wildlife crossing structure design.

An emerging critical priority for both transportation and natural resource agencies is to make North American highways safer for both drivers and wildlife. Further, roads have been acknowledged as a major obstacle to landscape connectivity and ecological vitality—a matter complicated by climate change which is predicted to change wildlife distributions and/or migration patterns. To address this safety and habitat connectivity issue, the Western Transportation Institute (WTI) initiated the ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition (ARC). A partnership quickly grew with North American federal, state, academic, non-profit and corporate entities playing important roles (http://www.arc-competition.com/partners.php). With the competition now over, the ARC Partnership has stated its overall goal as ensuring that a new generation wildlife crossing structure is implemented wherever it is needed to meet the needs of people and wildlife. Three main working groups will carry out objectives toward this end, one of which is this initiative. The ARC Technology Transfer Initiative (ARC TTI) will disseminate the collective innovations of the ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition (and any subsequent ARC competitions) to the transportation and natural resource communities and the next generation of practitioners. This project will select and engage in strategic outreach activities to bring the ARC technology and design philosophy to a target audience of current and future transportation and natural resource professionals. These activities will be shared with ARC Partnership to ensure synergy with other ARC related activities.