AASHTO Research Advisory Committee (RAC)/TRB Conduct of Research (COR)

Coordination and Collaboration Committee

Meeting Notes

05/25/11

Members and Friends Present:

Sue Sillick, Montana DOT (Co-Chair)

Nancy Chinlund, CalTrans (Co-Chair)

Leni Oman, Washington State DOT

Frank Law, CalTrans

David Jared, GDOT

Hau Hagedorn, Portland State Univ.

Phil Roke, FHWA

Alasdair Cain, RITA

Lisa Loyo, TRB

Chris Hedges, TRB

  1. Introductions/Housekeeping

·  No changes or additions to the Agenda were requested.

·  No corrections to the 2/2/2011 Meeting Notes were requested.

  1. RPPM Update –Nancy Chinlund, Linda Preisen, Sue Sillick

·  A guidance document on the RPPM site is pending.

·  The site will be announced at the June CUTC meeting.

·  An RPPM exhibit will be given at the AASHTO-RAC (hereafter RAC) summer meeting.

·  An RPPM webinar is to be held in August or September. Please send Sue your comments re: the site.

  1. RAC/CUTC Collaboration Update – Steve Albert, Jason Bittner, Chris Hedges, Leni Oman, Sue S.

·  All activities of this group will be discussed at the Joint RAC-CUTC Meeting held on Monday of the RAC meeting.

·  Discussion of this group’s role in national research agendas is ongoing.

·  A survey was sent out to state DOT’s and to UTC’s re: their partnering and collaborative agreements with one another. Thirty-five responses were received from state DOT’s and 26 from the UTC’s. This information is currently being synthesized. A Top 10 Requirements for successful State DOT-UTC Partnerships is being developed. Also, case studies on successful partnerships are in development. Finally guidelines will be developed on facilitating successful agreements.

·  RAC has begun an effort to share information about RAC and CUTC members, via one-page summaries of each state DOT research program and UTC. A format is in development.

  1. Lab Facilities – Steve A., Leni O. Sue S.,

·  No update on this. C&C is not sure if the federal survey went out from David Kuehn (FHWA/EAR).

·  Descriptions of 10 nationally funded UTC’s have been posted to the RPPM website. A web site is in development to capture all university transportation center lab facilities.

·  Survey of States: C&C may follow up with the states to refine the information received and ask more specific questions.

  1. Identification of universities conducting transportation research, outside of CUTC and federally funded UTCs – Kendra Levine

·  Kendra was not available to provide this update.

·  Sue advised Robin Kline (RITA) was to provide information re: UTC collaboration with international partners. This information is attached.

  1. Funding Guidebook – Sue S.

·  The Funding Guidebook (FG) is being updated. Sue sent an update to TRB staff for state programs that accept ideas and proposals. She is also working with Alasdair on this, with the overall goal of adding programs that need to be added and keeping existing ones updated.

·  The FG was circulated to the various USDOT modes, but the response wasn’t good. It might be placed with the Research Cluster groups with better success. Also, RITA is to appoint an Associate Director of RD&T soon, and it’s hoped that they can get on board with this effort soon and help obtain this information for the FG.

·  Sue also offered to develop speaking points for TRB staff to use on this at midyear meetings. She is to discuss with Kim Fisher.

  1. International Collaboration

·  Robin Kline sent out information regarding international collaboration activities among the UTCs.

·  ERA-NET Update

o  Chris provided an update on this program, which is analogous to the TPF program in the U.S. and possible NCHRP involvement therein.

o  ERA-NET had initial seed funding from the European Commission and ran well until this funding ran out.

o  Funding has been assumed by CEDR (analogous to AASHTO), but international collaboration not a high priority with them, and they are not interested in collaborating with NCHRP.

o  TRB, however, may use ERA-NET as a resource to find international members for NCHRP panels.

·  CCTF Action Plan – Nancy C., David J.

o  A survey re: state DOT’s international collaborations was posted on the RAC list serve. Twenty (20) state responded: six are collaborating internationally, (GDOT-Israel; D.C.-China; WSDOT-Canada, Norway; TxDOT-Mexico; Indiana DOT-China; CalTrans-Netherlands, France and Denmark), 13 are not, and one didn’t know.

o  A conference call with these states is suggested, to develop some sort of best practices set.

o  C&C would like more input on (1) whether such collaborations are practical at this point, considering economic and administrative constraints; and (2) who is driving these collaborations.

o  Modifications to the RPPM module re: international collaboration should be modified to include key contact people on both sides, domestic and foreign. Something about ERA-NET and the different European programs would also be helpful.

o  A topic statement to synthesize information on international agreements and mechanics may be helpful.

  1. Unfunded Research Needs – Sue S.

·  It was suggested that this task be dropped, but that something be added to the TKN website as to general topics of interest to RAC researchers, e.g. what is high value research, what are the research funding timelines, etc.

·  More thought is needed on how could state DOT’s et al. enumerate high priority items that they weren’t able to fund.

  1. RAC Report Distribution/Delivery – Leni O., Sue S.

·  A working group is needed on how best to get information out across the RAC Task Forces, map what we are doing, and understand expectations.

·  Leni is to arrange a meeting on this.

10.  TRB Working Group – Back to the Basics: Fostering and Nurturing a Research Agenda – Nancy C., Leni O., Sue S.

·  This Working Group consists of the TRB Technical Activities Council and members of the Conduct of Research Committee.

·  Research coordinators for each TRB standing committee are entering research needs statements. The Group would like to facilitate moving research ideas forward to research and implementation of identified research needs.

·  This effort is focused on TRB committees, whose members are not necessarily well connected to how research needs are developed into projects outside of TRB (e.g. the various funding programs available to state DOT’s, UTC’s, et al.)

·  Better information is needed on the life cycle from need statement to potential research opportunities.

·  This need should be sent to the TRB committee community, possibly as an agenda insert for their upcoming meetings.

  1. Ongoing Activities – Action Steps – FYI (See Attachment 1)
  1. Updates from other Task Forces

·  PM&Q. It was suggested that PM&Q should take the lead on developing a unified list of how states are complying with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA). David Jared and Michael Bonini, PM&Q co-chairs, are to follow up with Daniel Yeh (WisDOT) on this. Also, this task force is working on action sheets

·  TKN. A TRB Knowledge Management Task Force was established with Leni as chair.

  1. Other Coordination and Collaboration Activities

·  None were mentioned.

  1. Meetings – Next Meetings

·  Next Meeting Date – 7/25/11 (12:30-2:15 PDT, 1:30-3:15 MDT, 2:30-4:15 CDT, and 3:30-5:15 EDT) –

o  The 7/25 meeting should concentrate on the mission, objectives, & accomplishments of the Task Force to-date, due to the large number of new members. Leni plans to provide an overview of TKN’s.

·  Upcoming Meeting Dates - 9/28/11, and 12/7/11 (instead of regular meeting date during Thanksgiving week). Meeting times are as follows unless otherwise specified.

10:00 am – 12:00 pm Pacific

11:00 am – 1:00 pm Mountain

12:00 pm – 2:00 pm Central

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern

ATTACHMENT 1

AASHTO RAC/TRB COR Coordination and Collaboration Committee

Action Items

Update, pending, and action items are in red

Initiative / Action Steps / Who / Action Taken/Status /
Research in Progress (RIP) / Need more marketing to increase participation, need to strive for 100% data entry for organizations required to use RiP, need to broaden organizations with access to enter records into RiP. / Sue Sillick, Lisa Loyo, TRB Information Services and LIST Committees / Annual, an e-mail is sent to those who haven’t entered projects into RiP for the last year or so. Some states fund projects only every other year. It was requested a check box be added to the RiP site for each organization to confirm their data entry is up-to-date; Lisa Loyo indicated funds are not currently available for this programming change, but will keep the suggestion in a “parking lot” for future consideration. A review of RiP project status categories was completed, along with a survey to RAC. Recommendations (ftp://ftp.mdt.mt.gov/research/OTHER/RIP_PROJECT_STATUS_CATEGORIES-DEFINITIONS.DOCX) for changes to categories and adding definitions were made to TRB. TRB has made the recommended changes. Need to review gaps in organizations that enter data into RiP and close the gaps (CCTF, and TRB Information Services and LIST committees). FL UTC is reviewing RiP for duplicative research efforts.
Funding Guidebook / Maintain and add programs from other organizations. / Sue Sillick, Kim Fisher / The TRB International Activities Committee completed the update on the COST and EU programs among others; these are now in the funding guidebook. The funding guidebook is currently undergoing an update. Alasdair Cain/RITA is working on updating the USDOT portion of this guidebook. We still need a volunteer to assist with the other federal agencies. Steve Albert and Sue prepared a survey to states to identify state research programs other than SPR that meet the criteria for the funding guidebook; results can be found at ftp://ftp.mdt.mt.gov/research/OTHER/STATE_RESEARCH_PROGRAM_SURVEY_RESULTS.XLSX); the SPR section of the guidebook has been updated based on the survey results. Leni sent out a schedule for problem statements that her area had developed. A link to the funding guidebook has been added to the RPPM site; this document needs to be added to the funding guidebook. Need to add a calendar of events. Marketing so far has included: e-mails to RAC and UTCs, brochures at TRB annual meetings, and other venues as the opportunity has arisen (e.g., TRB Resources webinar). Need to discuss further marketing; one suggestion was to add a list of tools to the TRB Cheat Sheet distributed to TRB committee members at the Annual Meeting.
Improve – e.g., make more wiki-like / Possible future action.
Unfunded Research Needs Portal / Make unfunded TRB problem statements searchable. / Sue Sillick, Leni Oman / Roy Mesler (TRB) added a link to the NCHRP website and is waiting to see if Google indexes it. Google has not indexed TRB’s web pages; CCTF needs to review the value of this tool.
Beta test with UTC’s to see if useful. / Sue Sillick / Pending TRB problem statements being indexed by Google or new direction by CCTF.
Continue to add other research needs (e.g., 8-36 planning research needs, UTC spotlight conferences) / Leni Oman, Sue Sillick / This information has been added to RPPM, rather than this portal.
Improve search capability / Leni Oman / Possible future action.
Journal Articles / Write and submit article(s) on successful coordination and collaboration efforts. / Steve Albert and Sam Elrahman / A state DOT/UTC partnering article written by members of this committee was published in Public Roads in 2011. An article on UTCs written by RITA staff was published in TRNews in 2011
RITA Transportation Research Collaboration (TRC) Website / Research Clusters / Linda Preisen, Nancy Chinlund, Pat Casey, Jason Bittner, Sue Sillick, Hau Hagedorn, Amanda Wilson Robin Kline, MJ Fiocco / RITA developed a website titled Transportation Research Collaboration (TRC). CCTF has a spot on the site for research program and project management (RPPM) at a high level on the TRC site. As per Leni’s suggestion, the SCOR/RAC website has been reviewed and pertinent information is also now posted to this site. RITA had a poster at TRB as part of the LIST committee’s call for posters titled Search, Discovery and Current Awareness: New and Innovative Uses of Online Research Tools in Transportation Research and Implementation. The current pilot website can be found at http://www.transportationresearch.gov/Pages/index.aspx. Sue S. and others continue to make changes, add new information, and improve the site. This site, as well as the other sites on TRC, is now open for anyone to obtain an account. Need to work with RITA to market; one marketing tool discussed is webinars. It will also be marketed at the 2011 summer RAC meeting; Amanda W. will bring a poster and brochures, and will demonstrate the site at the exhibit.
Work with International Scan Team for International Tab / Nancy Chinlund, Barbara Harder, Robin Kline, Deb Elston / Robin noted that she had received information from several UTCs on international collaboration. Robin will add this information to the RITA site when the final location for International Programs is identified.
Work with other task force chairs to develop RPPM site. / Nancy Chinlund, Sue Sillick / Partnering with Value of Research and PM&Q TF to populate the website.
Use RPPM site for committee team collaboration. / Linda Preisen, Nancy Chinlund, Pat Casey, Jason Bittner, Sue Sillick, Hau Hagedorn, Amanda Wilson / A committee Collaboration site was added to the RPPM site. CALTRANS has posted information on their partnership with the Netherlands. There is also a link to TRB CoR and CCTF.
FHWA National Highway Research Agenda / John Moulden, C&C TF, PM&Q TF / 1st get FHWA agenda in order. Take inventory of national research needs. Use website for research community. Identify research gaps in national agenda to see who else might be addressing these underserved areas. John will send us something once it’s in writing. Need to evaluate/watch interaction with the NCHRP National Highway Research Framework Policy study, RTCC efforts, and RPPM.
Web 2.0 Tools / Plan TRB workshop. / Jason Bittner, Linda Preisen / Intellectual property session was held at 2011 Annual TRB Meeting.
Increase membership with interest and skills in Web 2.0 tools. / Linda Preisen / A survey issued to AASHTO RAC found many states block Face book, NING, and other social network sites. The COR Committee has moved to Google Groups.
Research Lab Facilities / Develop tool to identify themes, facilities, etc. for each UTC / Sue Sillick, Steve Albert, Leni Oman, David Kuehn / Leni shared that the NW (Region X Consortium) is having discussions on how to help frame areas of expertise that are needed to assist in coordination and collaboration. Using the FHWA’s strategic goals or States strategic plans was considered. This also may be helpful to frame the UTC web portal currently in development Robin requested any information from these types of discussions.