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Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology
Coordinating, Developing, and Delivering Highway Transportation Innovations

 
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Publication Number:  FHWA-HRT-19-008    Date:  January 2019
Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-19-008
Date: January 2019

 

Applications of Knowledge Discovery in Massive Transportation Data: The Development of a Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP)

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FOREWORD

Transportation researchers and practitioners have access to unprecedented amounts of data but lack the tools to easily store, manipulate, and analyze these data. The Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP) is an informatics-based system designed to manage massive amounts of transportation data and provide researchers an efficient way to conduct analytics on big data. The objectives of TRIP include creating the ability to handle massive amounts of transportation data; utilize open-source technologies and tools to ingest, store, align, and process data; accept structured, semistructured, and unstructured datasets from any source; provide an efficient way to query data without indepth knowledge of metadata; integrate with open-source and consumer off-the-shelf analytics products; and provide visualization tools to offer greater insights into data. TRIP architecture is flexible and built on open-source state-of-the-art technology developed with big data in mind. Although predominantly developed for transportation safety research, TRIP is domain agnostic and capable of addressing issues pertaining to operations and maintenance given the ingestion of the appropriate datasets.

This document chronicles the development of the platform and provides background information on the need for analytical tools. In addition, this document supplies the resources and instructions on how to set up an instance of the platform and how to operate it. This document will be useful for transportation researchers, operators, and data managers interested in working with large transportation datasets.

Brian P. Cronin, P.E.
Director, Office of Safety
Research and Development

Notice

This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for the use of the information contained in this document.

The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trademarks or manufacturers' names appear in this report only because they are considered essential to the objective of the document.

Quality Assurance Statement

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement.

 

Technical Report Documentation Page

1. Report No.

FHWA-HRT-19-008

2. Government Accession No.

 

3 Recipient's Catalog No.

 

4. Title and Subtitle

Applications of Knowledge Discovery in Massive Transportation Data: The Development of a Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP)

5. Report Date

January 2019

6. Performing Organization Code

 

7. Author(s)

Kevin Majka, Eric Nagler, Alex James, Alan Blatt, JohnPierowicz, Panagiotis Ch. Anastasopoulos (ORCID: 0000-0002-1555-3308), Grigorios Fountas (ORCID: 0000-0002-2373-4221)

8. Performing Organization Report No.

 

9. Performing Organization Name and Address

CUBRC
4455 Genesee St.
Buffalo, NY 14225

10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS)

 

11. Contract or Grant No.

DTFH6115C00016

12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address

Office of Corporate Research, Technology, and Innovation Management
Federal Highway Administration
6300 Georgetown Pike
McLean, VA 22101

13. Type of Report and Period Covered

Final Report; April 2015–April 2018

14. Sponsoring Agency Code

HRDS-2

15. Supplementary Notes

James Pol (HRDS-2), Office of Safety Research and Development, served as the Technical Manager for the Federal Highway Administration.

16. Abstract

Transportation researchers and practitioners have access to unprecedented amounts of data but lack the tools to easily store, manipulate, and analyze these data. The Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP) is an informatics-based system designed to manage massive amounts of transportation data and provide researchers an efficient way to conduct analytics on big data. The objectives of TRIP include creating the ability to handle massive amounts of transportation data; utilize open-source technologies and tools to ingest, store, align, and process data; accept structured, semistructured, and unstructured datasets from any source; provide an efficient way to query data without indepth knowledge of metadata; integrate with open-source and consumer off-the-shelf analytics products; and provide visualization tools to offer greater insights into data. TRIP architecture is flexible and built on open-source state-of-the-art technology developed with big data in mind. Although predominantly developed for transportation safety research, TRIP is domain agnostic and capable of addressing issues pertaining to operations and maintenance given the ingestion of the appropriate datasets.

17. Key Words

Informatics, analytics, big data, ingest, align, safety, operations, maintenance, visualization

18. Distribution Statement

No restrictions. This document is available to the public through the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161.
http://www.ntis.gov

19. Security Classification
(of this report)

Unclassified

20. Security Classification
(of this page)

Unclassified

21. No. of Pages

95

22. Price

 

Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) Reproduction of completed page authorized

 

 

 

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