Overview
The SHRP 2 Reliability focus area aims to benefit society by sponsoring research projects that seek to reduce highway congestion through incident reduction, management, response, and mitigation.
The data and analytical approach behind these research products can also be of significant long-term value if researchers can build new research and products based on this foundation. This requires that the base data, derived data, analytical models and tools, and so forth that make up the intellectual framework of the SHRP 2 Reliability research projects be preserved and made accessible. Transportation practitioners can also benefit from having access to much of the same information, particularly access to the research products that reflect the implementation of the SHRP 2 research efforts.
The experience of the first SHRP program, where 13 of the 14 major databases collected during that program are no longer accessible, illustrates the need to plan for data preservation and access well in advance. The preservation of so-called born-digital information is much harder than the preservation of traditional paper records because of rapid changes in technology, which, in turn, lead to rapid obsolescence of data formats and storage media.
Reliability Project L13, Requirements and Feasibility of a System for Archiving and Disseminating Data from SHRP 2 Reliability and Related Studies, was designed to assess the technical, economic, and business aspects of developing, operating, and maintaining a long-lived archival system that preserves and makes readily available to researchers and practitioners the data from SHRP 2 Reliability and related projects for a period of 20 to 50 years.
The research team interviewed the SHRP 2 program director and senior program officers for the Capacity, Reliability, Renewal, and Safety programs to establish the overall goals for the system, gather business requirements, and understand organizational and governance issues. The team also interviewed all active Reliability project contractors and the contractors for the related SHRP 2 Capacity Projects C04 (Improving Our Understanding of How Highway Congestion and Pricing Affect Travel Demand) and C05 (Understanding the Contribution of Operations, Technology, and Design to Meeting Highway Capacity Needs) to understand the nature of the data that would eventually be archived and to gauge the contractors’ preparedness for organizing and providing that data for archiving. Finally, the research team met with the general counsel of the National Academies to understand any legal or institutional issues with respect to data rights that might impact the feasibility of the Reliability Archive.
On a parallel track, the team conducted a literature survey to identify available and emerging technologies that might be applicable to the archive. The team also researched similar systems that have been deployed in government and industry and issues and best practices that have been identified in these systems.
From this foundational work, the research team developed a vision for the Reliability Archive that captured key high-level goals. Once the SHRP 2 program management validated them, the high-level goals provided guiding principles for the development of a conceptual design and a detailed set of requirements for the Reliability Archive.
Once agreement on the vision, concept, and requirements was established, the research team enumerated desirable user interfaces for the Reliability Archive based on the likely users of the system and their business requirements. The research team also analyzed a range of technical and administrative issues that needed to be considered before alternative solutions could be explored. The team then developed three alternative solution approaches that could satisfy the requirements specified through the research project.
A life-cycle cost model was developed to identify all of the initial and recurring costs likely to be incurred over the service life of the Reliability Archive, and a 25-year lifecycle cost analysis was performed for each of the three solution alternatives. The bene- fits to major stakeholders and the technical and business risks of each solution alternative were also analyzed. The output of this cost/benefit/risk analysis was a final recommendation on the feasibility of deploying the proposed Reliability Archive.