Site Directory

Consortia Members and Affiliations

Contact Information

NCRST-E Director: Roger L. King
Email: rking@ece.msstate.edu
Office Phone: (662) 325-3116

Advisory Committee:

• Claiborne Barnwell
  Assistant Environmental Division Engineer
  Room 3016
  P.O. Box 1850
  Mississippi Department of Transportation
  Jackson, MS 39215
  
  
• Bill Foisy
  Director, Transportation Planning
  Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham
  Magnolia office Park, Suite 220
  2112 11th Avenue South
  Birmingham, AL 35205
  
  
• Marc A. Foster
  Senior Systems Administrator
  Mississippi Department of Marine Resources
  1141 Bayview Avenue, Suite 101
  Biloxi, MS 39530
  
  
• James L. Frelk
  Vice President, Geospatial Information Systems
  P.O. Box 134008
  Veridian - ERIM International
  Ann Arbor, MI 48133-4008
  
  
• Dr. Chris J. Johannsen
  Director, Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing
  1150 Lilly Hall
  Purdue University
  West Lafayette, IN 47907
  
  
• Leni Oman
  Environmental Planning and Development Branch Manager
  Washington State Department of Transportation
  Environmental Affairs Office
  310 Maple Park Avenue SER
  PO Box 47331
  Olympia, WA 98504-7331
  
  
• Ed Sheffner
  NASA Advisor to NCRST-E
  Code YO
  NASA Headquarters
  300 E. St. SW
  Washington DC 20546
  
  
• Dan Smith - ER-W
  Research Ecologist
  Engineering Resources and Development Center
  Waterways Experiment Station
  3909 Halls Ferry Road
  Vicksburg, MS 39180-6199
  
  
• Courtney A. Stadd
  President and COO
  5618 Oldchester Road
  PixSell, Inc.
  Bethesda, MD 20814
  
  
• Rock G. Taber II
  Research Scientist
  U.S. EPA Region 4
  Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center
  61 Forsyth St., S.W.
  Atlanta, GA 30303
  
  

Consortia members may be contacted via their web sites:

Goals

• increasing the awareness and understanding of remote sensing technology through workshops and educational materials,
• developing innovative remote sensing technology solutions for use in transportation assessment and planning, in particular the capabilities of new high resolution, multispectral instruments,
• developing the tools necessary to extract information content from remote observations in an efficient manner,
• streamlining and standardizing data processing for information necessary to meet NEPA environmental assessment requirements

Background

Since the passage of the National Environmental Policy Review Act of 1969 (NEPA), the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, and other related legislation, transportation agencies have been obligated to put transportation projects through an often rigorous and time-consuming environmental review process. A need for expediting the approval process was voiced in TRB A1F02's millennium paper entitled - Environmental Analysis for Transportation Projects. However, when the author of the paper listed several technologies that have had a "profound effect in the area of environmental analysis"; remote sensing was missing from that list. NCRST-E has a goal to help increase awareness and interest in utilizing remote sensing to expedite and standardize the environmental review process among transportation agencies, to make the process part of the early stages of project development and design, and to do so in a more cost-effective manner. However to accomplish this goal, the utility of remote sensing imagery needs to be examined to see if it in fact provides information that is a significant improvement to sources already available for use by planners, decision-makers, and other members of the transportation community.

Initial Projects

Air Quality (University of Mississippi)

It is important to study and quantify the effects of traffic type and volume, traffic gridlock, and urban growth on air quality by studying rural to heavily populated urban areas. The research plan for air pollution study and transportation related emission modeling over four years is primarily focused on traffic characteristics, emission, climatic parameters and other significant urban/rural/socio-economic issues that may influence the air quality models. Both roadways and remote sensing studies will be conducted. Weather conditions will also be collected at the same time or obtained from nearby NOAA record sites. An experiment design will be developed to select sampling sites ranging from rural to heavily urban areas. Other factors associated with congestion, commuter traffic and driving distances will be considered.

One potential rural area and low traffic site is located in Oxford, Mississippi. Three major state highways and Interstate I-55 (about 24 miles to the west) surround this site. The University of Mississippi is assisting the City of Oxford for the deployment of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) using a US DOT grant. An important part of this GIS project is an airborne laser and photo mapping of the entire city and development of a comprehensive digital terrain model and GIS. This will provide ideal digital data for evaluation of space imaging data and serves as a good example of leveraging existing research funds on NCRST-E funded projects.

Objective: To apply remote sensing technology to estimate surface properties and classify land use and land cover change at multiple spatial resolutions to determine growth trends in response to, and environmental and socioeconomic effects of, transportation development.

Demonstration Phase (Years 1-2):

• Develop better understanding of operational DOT requirements.
• Determine extent of utilization of current remote sensing technology.
• Develop preliminary image products from variety of remote sensing systems to educate potential users on the nature of remote sensing data and products and to facilitate discussion.
• Develop inventory of USGS stream flow data for southern Appalachian region.
• Develop a spatial database of resource and socioeconomic data for the region.

Analysis Phase - Regional Scale (Years 3-4):

• Develop historical LULC classification and analyze for growth trends and environmental changes.
• Characterize partitioning of surface temperature among LULC classes at landscape scales.
• Characterize changes in basin-scale hydrology and relate to changing landscape parameters.
• Evaluate the utility of using remotely sensed data in assessing the economic benefits and costs of road development.
• Assist DOT's in incorporating spatial data into existing watershed ecosystem assessment/ management programs.

As part of this project a unified Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) product will be developed for the selected study area. Especially significant in this project will be the assessment of inland and coastal waterways. Baseline data will be developed for existing highways corridors in these study areas. Existing land use/land cover, land use and cover change, and environmental impacts determined in baseline studies will be provided to the extent possible as inputs into growth forecasts to predict future environmental impacts for existing and proposed transportation corridors. Results will also be used to evaluate the accuracy of existing Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). Major objectives are the development of techniques to utilize remote sensing imagery to produce more detailed land use/land cover classifications to mitigate the need for the use of secondary data sources to any significant degree, especially on regional and corridor scales. Also, to demonstrate new uses for remote sensing imagery in planning and evaluating transportation corridors according to NEPA guidelines.

The objectives and related approaches are:

• Establish a historical start date for the LULC aspect of this project in collaboration with personnel from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and MS DOT. (Year 1)
• Acquire imagery from available commercial and government satellite systems for the Mississippi Gulf Coast for use as a baseline in a comparative analysis of these images to derive significant information on coastal target characteristics at the landscape scale. (Year 1)
• Increase knowledge of satellite data sources for potential use in corridor studies. Satellite data sources will be surveyed to determine optimal data sets for further study in transportation corridor planning and analysis. (Year 1)
• Use this baseline imagery to assess the utility of both commercial and government imaging systems to identify, observe, and measure the impacts of transportation network growth on environmental indicators. (Years 1 and 2)
• Use imagery to develop a detailed LULC classification and identify physical features of particular interest in transportation planning. Use remotely sensed data to identify both land covers and land uses along the I-10 corridor. This analysis will focus on delineating surface features such as topography, watersheds, waterways, vegetation, wetlands, and other features that would impact the siting of new transportation systems. (Years 2,3)
• Demonstrate how to utilize multi-platform remote sensing imagery (both archived and contemporary) in assessing the impact of transportation infrastructure and environmental targets. This will include developing algorithms for data fusion. (Years 2,3)
• Develop techniques to integrate RS data from varying spatial, temporal, and radiometric resolutions for better spatial modeling of environmental targets. (Years 3 and 4)

NCRST News

The joint DOT/NASA program sponsors four university consortia. The lead universities are: Ohio State University (Flows), Mississippi State University (Environmental Assessments), University of California at Santa Barbara (Infrastructure), and the University of New Mexico (Disasters and Safety).

NCRST NEWS is published quarterly and is provided at no cost to individuals and agencies within the transportation industry. It is currently available for download in PDF format.

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Other NCRSTs funded by DOT/NASA