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21st Century Operations Using 21st Century Technologies
Table of Contents

Use of Decisionmaking and Information Management Systems in Mainstreaming TSMO

1. Introduction

Transportation agencies use transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) to enhance the reliability and safety of their systems. There are numerous ways to support mainstreaming TSMO throughout transportation agencies and advancing TSMO as way of doing business. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has developed a series of White Papers focused on mainstreaming TSMO through formal policies and processes, changes in agency culture, advances in decisionmaking and information management, and development of business cases for TSMO.

This White Paper discusses the decisionmaking tools and information management systems (IMSs) used by transportation agencies and how they can support mainstreaming TSMO efforts. Decisionmaking tools, such as decision support systems (DSSs), and IMSs facilitate more informed decisions, which enable transportation agencies to apply TSMO more effectively, thereby increasing its credibility and making it more likely to be mainstreamed. Although there are limited direct examples of DSSs and IMSs being used for mainstreaming TSMO within transportation agencies, this White Paper provides insights from related uses of these technologies for their potential use in mainstreaming TSMO.

DSSs and IMSs are related, and often a DSS includes an IMS component. An IMS evaluates, analyzes, and processes an organization’s data to provide meaningful information. Typically, IMSs focus on making an organization’s internal operations more efficient. A DSS is a system that supports effective decisionmaking and decisions in specific situations.

Background

The transportation sector is rapidly changing while increasing in complexity with respect to data, functions, and decisions. In addition, the workforce is changing and required skills are fluctuating. An organization is composed of personnel, infrastructure (including software), and activities. This White Paper focuses on the organizational aspects of decisionmaking, DSSs, and IMSs. These components are all interrelated within an organization’s overall operation. Workers and executives have to manage the daily barrage of information to make decisions. Information related to these decisions and across different activities (knowledge) has to be stored and managed. As data and tasks become more complex and computing power more sophisticated, DSSs are developed to facilitate decisionmaking. Similarly, increased computing power and sophistication have led to the development and use of various IMSs that provide the backbone to DSSs and other software and are a resource for managing employee knowledge (especially in a time of increasing turnover and background training variability).

These three components (decisionmaking, DSSs, and IMSs) roughly coincide with the notion of people, processes, and infrastructure connected in any range of activities in an agency. TSMO cuts across the range of activities at an agency and is often at the cutting edge of computer systems and technology. Consequently, efforts to mainstream TSMO throughout an organization will often touch on each of these components, ranging from decisionmakers in an array of TSMO settings to utilizing DSS for TSMO applications and to relying on IMSs to organize the wealth of data brought in by TSMO activities.

Effective TSMO requires transportation staff from different disciplines to make decisions across a range of activities, including planning, operations, maintenance, and performance management. DSSs and IMSs backed by relevant data can be strategically applied in all these activities to increase the desired outcomes of TSMO for users of the transportation system. These successes increase the awareness and acceptance of TSMO, which promotes the integration of TSMO throughout an agency. The incorporation of TSMO or TSMO considerations into agency DSSs or IMSs helps connect TSMO to larger agency processes and decisionmaking. For example, including ITS and other operations-related assets within an asset management system helps to mainstream TSMO into a department of transportation’s (DOT’s) asset management activities. Below are four major areas where DSS and IMS can help integrate TSMO into decisionmaking:

  • Planning. TSMO can be better integrated into the transportation planning process and other agency planning activities with information management tools and data that help agencies consider TSMO in connection with mobility and safety needs and solutions. This could be a geographic information system (GIS) tool that combines layers of data for congestion, safety, air quality, and other needs so that investment decisions involve a consideration of multiple factors. Additionally, access to high-quality system performance data allows planners and operators to determine the needs for TSMO strategies and evaluate TSMO strategy effectiveness. Data can also support the benefit-cost analysis of potential mobility solutions and help make the case for TSMO strategies.
  • Operations. To effectively manage the efficient and safe flow of people and goods, transportation system operators must make tactical decisions on when, where, and how to use operations assets, such as ramp metering, dynamic message signs, dynamic lane use, signal timing regimes, and other system management levers. Many transportation management centers use DSSs to support or automate some of those decisions based on the current roadway situations and historical data. These systems help turn data (real-time and historical) into actionable information. The more effective these actions are, the more agencies will turn to TSMO to address transportation issues. As discussed in the next chapter, integrated corridor management (ICM) and active transportation and demand management (ATDM) often rely on DSS to support real-time management.
  • Maintenance and asset management. Applying asset management processes, databases, and DSSs to TSMO assets improves asset reliability and uptime, which is necessary for effective TSMO strategies. As mentioned above, integration of TSMO assets with the management of other transportation assets helps mainstream TSMO.
  • Performance management. The intelligent transportation systems (ITS) underlying many TSMO activities generate a lot of data that can be used in agency scorecards and performance management efforts. These data can help demonstrate the cost-effective use of resources and before-and-after effects of projects, such as TSMO, infrastructure improvements, safety countermeasures, and others. These data support overall agency performance management decisions.

Objectives

This paper explores how decisionmaking, DSS, and IMS may be mechanisms to help integrate and mainstream TSMO within transportation agencies. Data, DSSs, IMSs, and the supported decisionmaking processes can enable or hinder mainstreaming TSMO within an integrated, collaborative organizational culture at transportation agencies. Agency culture impacts and is impacted by the data gathered, analysis performed, information managed, and decisionmaking processes (along with relevant DSSs) of the staff and leadership that comprise the organization.

This White Paper begins with an introduction in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 presents an overview of DSSs as tools to aid decisionmaking and connects this broader background to specific transportation agency uses of DSS. It also includes a discussion of the use of DSS with more advanced TSMO strategies (e.g., integrated corridor management, active transportation and demand management) and how those initiatives can help mainstream TSMO. Chapter 3 focuses on the broad area of IMSs, including the role of big data and their use among transportation agencies. Chapter 4 concludes the Paper with factors that agencies may find helpful to consider when looking to use IMSs and DSSs to support mainstreaming TSMO.

Intended Audience

This White Paper is written for transportation agencies—State DOTs and local and regional agencies who work in coordination with State DOTs—interested in mainstreaming and integrating TSMO into agency-wide activities. It is specifically aimed toward TSMO leaders, department heads, or functional unit leaders. It is intended to help agency personnel in multiple disciplines, not just TSMO and operations staff, understand ways TSMO can complement and integrate with their business practices. Information technology (IT) and data staff within transportation agencies can use this paper to understand their connections to mainstreaming TSMO.

Why Mainstream TSMO?

Transportation agencies have focused on the design, construction, and maintenance of transportation facilities. TSMO expands this focus by looking to operational improvements to existing facilities to maintain and restore system performance before adding physical capacity. Mainstreaming in the context of business processes is defined as “[P]roducts and services which are readily available to and appealing to the general public, as opposed to being of interest only to a very specific subset of the public.” (Business Dictionary 2020) Mainstreaming TSMO makes management and operations strategies readily understood, considered, appealing, and available to the system users (public) as well as to agency leadership and staff, regardless of where they sit in the organization.

Typically, TSMO has been initiated in operations and maintenance business areas within transportation agencies, often evolving with ITS technologies and functions that involve ITS deployment programs and other operations (e.g., maintaining signal systems, and detecting and clearing incidents). Mainstreaming TSMO allows a broader range of strategies to be integrated throughout transportation departments and related agencies and organizations. Mainstreaming TSMO engages planners, designers, operators, and system users (public and private sector), and touches all aspects of mobility, including congestion, air quality, sustainability, safety, security, reliability, and related quality of life concerns. The goal of mainstreaming is to routinely consider TSMO strategies as solutions of equal substance with other options for improving transportation system performance and addressing transportation needs within a community or region.