National Center for Integration and Systems Engineering of Transportation Technology Feasibility Study

The objective of this study is to determine the feasibility of creating a National Center for Integration and Systems Engineering of Transportation Technology (NCISETT). This center will be dedicated to developing and promoting a systems engineering approach to the integration and deployment and evaluation of complex transportation technologies.

The Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University-Bozeman is the largest Research and Special Programs Administration University Transportation Center focused on rural transportation. A cooperative transportation research effort between the California Department of Transportation, Nebraska Department of Roads, Montana Department of Transportation, and Montana State University-Bozeman, WTI has an ongoing $8 million annual budget and a portfolio involving 35 states and six countries. WTI has an expanding emphasis on rural public transit, advanced transportation technologies, winter mobility, transportation infrastructure, and vehicle/wildlife interactions. Development and deployment of advanced transportation technologies is, of necessity, a multidisciplinary process requiring application of the skills base of civil engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, human factors engineering, and sciences such as ecology, chemistry, and economics. Currently, though, the transportation industry has a severe shortage of personnel who have the knowledge and experience to bring these disciplines together into an effective team. There is also a lack of knowledge about the best management practices for integrating the products of these disciplines. Deployment of advanced transportation technology is a process of six interdependent steps, (1) research to explore the underlying technical questions about the operational principles of the technology, (2) engineering to convert the underlying principles into practice, (3) deployment of the technology into the transportation infrastructure, (4) operation and maintenance of the technology, (5) formative and summative evaluation of the technology during the engineering and deployment stages, and (6) decommissioning of the technology when its useful life is completed. The systems integration process serves as the link between these six steps as well as between the disciplines involved in each step. WTI proposes to leverage our existing status and expertise to form a National Center for Integration and Systems Engineering of Transportation Technology. This center will bring together a multidisciplinary team of engineers and scientists from a broad range of university departments to address the education, research, and applications issues in the transportation systems engineering and systems integration process. This study shall determine the feasibility of creating such a center.