Programs & Labs
Subhead H2
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Report evaluates freight performance measures
The millions of tons of freight moved on America’s roadways every year is a crucial component of the national economy. Analyzing how well freight moves on the roads is the domain of freight performance measure (FPM) systems—specialized software packages that crunch data gleaned from vehicle-tracking systems to determine how quickly freight is being moved. In a new report published by CTS, Chen-Fu Liao of the Minnesota Traffic Observatory evaluates the FPM system developed by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) and proposes an “ideal” FPM system to support future needs.
The ATRI system processes raw data obtained from the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) systems used by many large trucking companies to track freight movements. These data are input into a geospatial database, which in turn is queried via geographic information system (GIS) software, yielding information about the speed of freight movements.
Scalability—the ability of the system to handle large data sets as well as small ones—emerged as a serious issue in the original system, because the GIS software was not designed to handle extremely large data sets such as those produced by monitoring freight movements over a large geographic area. To overcome this limitation, the current ATRI system (dubbed FPMS II) stores its data in a more powerful database that the GIS software can access.
The “ideal” system proposed by Liao fully separates data pre-processing and storage from the applications—such as GIS, mapping, or Web publishing—that rely on the data. Access to the data is mediated by a “middle tier” data manager system, improving flexibility and overall performance.
Freight Performance Measure Systems (FPMS) System Evaluation and Data Analysis (CTS 08-01) is available from the CTS Web site.