Over the last decade, the States, Federal and local agencies, and others involved in highway transportation have placed significant additional emphasis on improving highway safety and infrastructure performance. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Governors Highway Safety Association, and the USDOT have set the goal of a 20 percent improvement in safety as measured by reductions in fatalities and injuries. A central focus of FHWA¿s infrastructure research has always been to maximize performance and significantly reduce the associated long-term costs. In 1998, AASHTO developed its Strategic Highway Safety Plan that identified 22 areas needing improvement. A number of these focus areas dealt with the roadway or roadside elements of highway design, operation, and maintenance. The Plan also identified data, especially roadway and roadside data, as needing significant improvements. The need for improved roadway and roadside data has also been echoed in numerous other initiatives before and after the AASHTO Plan. There was a call for ¿safety management systems¿ in earlier Federal legislation; a complete inventory of the roadway and all its features and condition was determined as prerequisite for effective monitoring, research, and decision-making to improve safety and to track infrastructure performance status. Over the last 2 years, the FHWA¿s Office of Safety R&D Advanced Research Team at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center developed the instrumented prototype vehicle capable of accurately measuring various highway infrastructure conditions and engineering parameters. The vehicle, called the Digital Highway Measurement (DHM) van, is able to capture all measurements while operating at normal highway speeds therefore avoiding a disturbance to traffic as data is collected. The initial DHM van assembled at FHWA¿s TFHRC already has a sufficient number of measurement sensors completed and working at this time to demonstrate its potential. A second phase is needed to collect feedback on a wider range of roads and road conditions, make improvements in response to user feedback, and produce system specification so others may construct DHM vans for production use. A more detailed overview of the van¿s present technical capabilities is posted on the FHWA FTP Server (web site FTP://FHWAFTP.fhwa.dot.gov) in folders labeled HRDS\DHM_POOLEDFUNDS. (The user ID is hrdsguest and the password is hrdsguest.) Click on the file labeled Draft-ExecSum-DHMFinalRpt-PhaseI.pdf. The Final Report for the Phase I work is in preparation and will be placed in the same FTP server folder when available along with other various published papers and presentation material that have been produced over the years.

The goals of this Pooled Funds Project are to finalize development of the existing "mid project" vehicle; explore the incorporation of new sensors and algorithms that expand the number of items measured and/or the accuracy of the data collected; develop a second van; test and evaluate both vans; receive comments and reflect recommendations of State DOT and Federal users into a final set of system specifications. The long-range objective for the DHM van is to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness, and quantity of roadway and roadside engineering data for both design and analysis processes within a state or local highway department or for Federal agencies. The output from this study will be the functional specifications for the total system (van); this will be beneficial for the states as they then can commercially arrange for construction of their own measurement vehicles. The initial two resulting instrumented vehicles will also be used for further research and development of the system.

The scope of the work for this project will include refinements and completion of the development of the existing Digital Highway Measurement Van; release of an initial set of system specifications; assembly of a second van; the van¿s collection and evaluation of new data from roads within participating States and agencies; obtaining recommendations from the partner States and agencies on additional vehicle/sensor and measurement enhancements; and completion of a system specification.

Technical comments: The first van is near completion (mid-project level) at this time. The instrumented van's specific measurement capabilities are listed on its web site; the corresponding listed improvements are much greater than the current state-of-the-practice accuracies. The presence of even the current van¿s capability in a state DOT office would represent a significant increase and improvement in roadway and roadside data for highway design, operation, and maintenance, and ultimately in the improvement of highway safety and infrastructure performance. Participation Comments: This project is open to any number of participating states or other Government Offices, with a minimum of 10 needed for this study. The approximate amount of funding requested per partner is $50,000 per year for 3 years for a total commitment of $150,000. Funding commitments will continue to be accepted through March 31, 2006. NOTE: The above material is a condensed version of the full solicitation document. The following link leads to the full document with more details under each of the headings above and includes a section of references.