Meeting Critical Data Needs for Decision Making in State and Metropolitan Transportation Agencies: Summary of a Conference

The objective of the conference, Meeting Critical Data Needs for Decision Making in State and Metropolitan Transportation Agencies, was to understand the data needs of today’s transportation decision makers and to identify and discuss strategies to ensure that essential data will be available to support transportation decisions in the future. Approximately 100 policy makers, program managers, data experts, and analysts from states, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), academia, and the private sector came together to establish an understanding of the challenges and opportunities for addressing transportation data needs. This conference summary presents summaries of the conference presentations that are intended to capture the key points made by each speaker. After the presentation summaries, brief descriptions of each application presented at the electronic poster session are provided, with links to follow for further information. This report includes selected references that were provided to the conference participants in advance of the conference and a list of the attendees. Appendix A provides a summary of key themes and observations from the three preconference workshops. Appendix B provides a tabular synthesis of the information needs, research questions, and potential approaches discussed by each breakout group. Appendix C presents the results of a postconference survey that was distributed to conference participants to identify what insights they gained at the conference and what follow-up activities they felt were important.