Motor Carrier Field Systems Group
Improving the safety of our nation's highways is receiving extensive exploration through the Motor Carrier Field Systems Program (MCFSP) work of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute.
There are seven interrelated roadside, investigative and analytical software programs used by specialists nationwide, all developed and used through the field systems program. These systems are considered critical to the mission of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They are steadily updated and refined to reflect regulatory, enforcement policy and computer technology changes.
Researchers invest a considerable amount of effort to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of its software programs. Focusing on developing and maintaining software systems used by federal and state motor carrier safety specialists, as well as private industry professionals, the MCFSP emphasizes four areas of exploration for future development:
- Researchers are working toward wireless communication solutions for the software systems that will allow users to send and receive data from any location.
- A second development will be to further enhance the various software programs to be web-based in order to operate smoothly across a variety of systems, as well as to provide the user easy access to relevant information.
- A third goal is to explore the use of voice-recognition technology in the software systems. This would allow for much faster and easier entry of data.
- The final area for emphasis into the future is to continue the research into methods to improve the data and algorithms that make up certain components of the software and to search for further areas where improvements can be made.
For information regarding specific software programs developed through the FMCSA Field Systems Group refer to its website at http://fmcsa-fsg.dot.gov/ or contact Brenda Lantz at brenda.lantz@ndsu.edu.
Check out our websites!
The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute website currently features the preliminary results of the North Dakota Grain and Oilseed 1999-2001 Biennial Strategic Transportation Analysis. The report includes information on shuttle trains, heavy rail cars, intermodal facilities and location analysis.
The ATAC site (www.atacenter.org) has information on the VISSIM Basic Training Course to be held in Bloomington, Minn., June 18-20.
Mountain-Plains Consortium and TEL8 courses and information are also listed. You can visit the sites at www.mountain-plains.org and www.tel8.org.
Information on people and programs for the entire Institute is on the www.ugpti.org site.
