TMIP Annual Report October 2012 - September 2013

TMIP Webinars

In order to support TMIP's mission and goals, two categories of web-delivered seminars ("webinars") were designed: 1) the Web Knowledge and Information Exchange (WKIE), in which an agency or professional communicates a specific project or subject-related experience; and 2) Workshops Over the Web (WOW) webinars, which involve technical subject matter capacity building.

WKIE webinars provide a nationwide virtual platform on which stakeholders may impart knowledge and insight from relevant experiences. WKIE webinars are held on current topics of interest to the transportation modeling, simulation, and analysis communities. WKIE is composed of both one-day webinars and multi-day webinar series.

WOW webinars are typically conducted as a multi-day series, organized for highly complex topics, such as Land Use and Activity-Based Modeling, which are delivered as eight- and twelve-part sessions, respectively.

TMIP records all sponsored webinars and makes summaries available at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/tmip/community/webinars/.

Audio-video recordings, and an Instructor's Manual that includes all of the presentation slides in the series with complete speaker notes and written transcripts of the questions and answers from each session, are available for download on the TMIP|COP website. There are currently more than 50 recorded webinars on many different topics related to transportation planning in the TMIP Webinar archive; these range in length from one to two and a half hours.

Rebekah Anderson stated why she liked TMIP webinars best in her October 17, 2013 email feedback.

Performance Period Accomplishments

Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are required by Federal law to develop regional transportation plans through the estimation of future travel supply and demand and the analysis of transportation investment impacts. Emerging issues such as road pricing, peak spreading, climate change, non-motorized travel, mixed land use, and freight movement have prompted the need for advanced modeling practices such as activity-based modeling.

A WOW webinar series was developed to provide a comprehensive resource on agency experience with activity-based modeling. This series has continued to benefit the travel modeling community and those whom it serves by filling the gap between overly technical documentation and nontechnical resources to meet the immediate needs of MPO staff.

During the performance period (October 2012 to September 2013), six webinars were convened as part of this broader 12-session instructional series on activity-based modeling. Participation in each of the six sessions varied, but was often close to the maximum of 100 meeting room connections permitted by the regular FHWA license.

Aside from the webinar series focused on agencies' experience in activity-based modeling, several other sessions, including a session on Tour-Based and Supply Chain Freight in Chicago, a Virtual Conversation with TMIP Community Members to generate feedback on existing and planned initiatives, Advanced Analytical Techniques in North Central Texas, were convened during the performance period.

Table 2 provides more details on the 10 sessions held in this performance period.

Table 2: TMIP Webinar Sessions, Participants, Dates

A large number of agencies responded with positive feedback in the evaluation polls conducted at the end of each individual webinar session. Participant feedback, via the participant poll slides following each webinar, indicated immense public support. Some of the specific comments are "It was a great webinar!", "No suggestions at this time. Really good information was shared. Lots of food for thought", and "Thank you for the webinar series!"

Contributions to Program

A number of agencies have developed, or are developing, activity-based models, and agency staff members would like to know lessons learned in activity-based model development. In addition, issues regarding advanced-forecasting methods-including freight and goods movement, application of advanced analytical techniques, and modeling for major transportation investments-are areas of increasing interest for agencies. Therefore, each of these topics was addressed during this performance period.

The Activity-Based Model Webinar series include four "Agency Experience Using Activity-Based Models (ABM)" sessions. In addition to the four ABM experience sharing sessions, webinars were held to highlight good practices on other relevant modeling issues, including a Tour-Based and Supply Chain Freight webinar presented by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) and a session on "The Path Toward Advanced Analytical Techniques" presented by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG).

These 10 webinars played a unique role in achieving the TMIP mission by efficiently fulfilling both TMIP Outreach and Agency Support goals. These webinar sessions were effective in imparting knowledge of current and emerging practices in activity-based, freight and analytical modeling techniques to state, regional and local agencies. The recorded webinar sessions are available online and may serve as a source of reference, information, and expert advice for agencies planning to undertake advanced-forecasting endeavors. The individual webinar session held on March 28, 2013 served as a virtual conversation between TMIP staff and members of the TMIP Community and proved highly effective in gaining input from members to help meet user needs.

[1] We derive the participants from the first interactive poll question asking how many people are at each location. We assume that 6-9 people is "6" and 10-20 is "10" for the purposes of doing the multiplication. As can be seen below, the interactive poll question tells us about 79 people participated in total.