Needs and observability assessment projects are proposed to quantify the state-of-the-art in current transportation/utility engineering practices that could be replaced or enhanced by remote sensing. These projects are keys to setting up validation sites for specific measurements. There are five primary application domains: railways, roadways, waterways, pipelines, and power transmission lines. Therefore, five assessment projects are proposed with the first three tasks (below) being conducted for each application domain:

1. Assess the viability of identifying via remote sensing features that influence the design, construction, maintenance, and use of systems in each of the five application domains. Examples include features that describe geological attributes, surface integrity, resources, and wide area traffic phenomena.

2. Assess the cost and accuracy of current transportation/utility engineering practices for the characterization of features that influence the design, construction, maintenance, and use of systems. These results will be used as the baseline for quantifying cost/time reductions and accuracy improvements for activities that are replaced or enhanced with remote sensing.

3. Identify a portfolio of potential remote sensing applications for each domain and utilize the cost/benefit analyses to select and initiate core research projects. Current projects being considered involve investigating the use of space and airborne remote sensing to:

1. Reduce construction costs and time by the following:

• precisely locating existing transportation infrastructures, wetlands and animal habitats, buildings, farmlands, forests, and geological features to determine the optimal route for a corridor.
• quickly producing digital terrain models that provide the foundation for civil engineers to begin planning construction requirements.

2. Improve systems planning and design functions by the following:

• recording wide area traffic phenomena to build better traffic forecasting and simulation models.
• finding optimal locations for the placement of transportation facilities for connecting different modes of transportation.
• recording how new transportation infrastructures influence future land use
• patterns to build better urban planning decision support systems.

3. Improve safety and management by the following:

• inspecting railways, highways, and power lines.
• inventorying highway markings, signs, bridges, etc.
• mapping drainage patterns around transportation infrastructures.
• determining flood plains and evacuation routes.

4. The completion of the above three assessment tasks for the five application domain will also result in the specification and acquisition of additional laboratory resources and other requirements necessary build capacity of the research program beyond year one.

5. In addition to needs and observability assessment projects, a research project is proposed to investigate using remote sensing to aid engineers in the planning and construction of railway corridors. This research is especially timely given the recent announcement by U. S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater designating the new Gulf Cost Corridor for high speed trains. It is postulated that remote sensing can be used to locate existing transportation/utility infrastructures, wetlands and animal habitats, buildings, farmlands, forests, and geological features that influence the routing and construction of corridors. Ground-truth measurements will be collected and compared to remotely sensed data to relate physical features to the remotely sensed data.

• Identify a portfolio of potential remote sensing applications that are technologically and economically viable.
• Provide a baseline measure for quantifying the benefits of remote sensing applications that mature through the RSTC process.