Transportation Systems
Participants
Except for aerospace, the Midwest is the acknowledged leader in the delivery and management of U.S. transportation systems and services. As the crossroads for inland waterways and transcontinental rail systems, and the birthplace of the automotive industry, the region has evolved into a complex network of intermodal systems and services that form the basis of our nation's transportation system. The businesses that manufacture transportation equipment and the governmental agencies that regulate public and private transportation assets have over the last several decades developed massive logistical systems for licensing the use and monitoring the movements of equipment and merchandise throughout the country, and for maintaining and policing the traditional infrastructure assets in the system. Recent advances in computer speed, sensors and related instrumentation, machine vision systems, mass data management and mobile connectivity have opened up new possibilities for developing real-time systems that integrate global positioning, continuous event monitoring and situation assessment technology that will enable end to end visibility of the movement of people and products throughout the nation and around the world.
Organization
The Institute is in contact with many of the manufacturing, service and governmental organizations in the region about collaborative research services, cyber-infrastructure and computational resources that are believed to be beneficial, and in some cases necessary, for development of future transportation products and traffic management systems. It is the expectation of the participants that leaders will be selected, work teams organized and collaborative research projects identified that will be served by the cyber infrastructure being developed by the Institute. If you or your organization is interested in being a participant in the transportation systems cluster please follow the link to Contacts.
Projects
The Institute is a partner in two regional transportation research related activities: the Milwaukee Gateway Aerotropolis project and the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory (TOPS).
Role of the Institute
The Institute will support the work of the participants in the transportation and logistics cluster by providing web-based collaboration services to assist project participants with communications, project management, financial and resource management. The Institute will also provide some or all of the computational resources necessary to model, analyze and simulate machine-to-machine and machine-to-business interfaces, structural design elements, and process flow within manufacturing plants, and to configure advanced manufacturing management systems that couple, in real time, vertical plant and business level processes and horizontal supply-chains in order to improve the agility, quality and performance of commercial enterprises.