Skip to main content

PennDOT honoured for modernised data collection

PennDOT's modernised field data collection process recently received an international achievement award for its innovative use of geographic information system technology. The Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award recognises vision, leadership, hard work and innovative use of technology and was presented at the Esri International User Conference in San Diego. PennDOT received the award for its use of technology to collect information on local roads and bridges such as location, condition and structure type
July 17, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
6111 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's (PennDOT) modernised field data collection process recently received an international achievement award for its innovative use of geographic information system technology.

The Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award recognises vision, leadership, hard work and innovative use of technology and was presented at the Esri International User Conference in San Diego.

PennDOT received the award for its use of technology to collect information on local roads and bridges such as location, condition and structure type. The mobile collection method allows better documentation of local roads and bridges in the department's asset inventory systems and allowed PennDOT to reduce the time to collect information on a single local bridge structure from twenty to six minutes. The software also supported collecting information on more than 30,000 segments of local roads and nearly 3,700 local bridges, replacing paper forms and manual data entry.

“We're very proud to receive this award recognising our efforts to modernise how we do business," PennDOT secretary Barry J Schoch said. "By using innovative, mobile technology we can collect data on state and locally owned roads quickly and more efficiently so that we have current information on road and bridge conditions.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • ITS World Congress Hall of Fame winners
    September 8, 2016
    The ITS World Congress 2016 Hall of Fame winners have been announced and will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 23rd ITS World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, 10-14 October, Melbourne, Australia. The Awards recognise individuals, industries and local governments striving to set the bar higher and enhance the end user experience. Local solutions often have wider applications, ensuring international transport, safety and technology improvements, enhancing liveability in cities and communitie
  • Asking drivers what information they need: radical but effective
    March 19, 2014
    When Texas A&M Transportation Institute was asked to devise a temporary traveller information system for work zones, it started by asking drivers what they need. Robert Brydia explains the thinking, implementation and results. US Interstate 35 (I-35) runs roughly north–south originating in Laredo, Texas and ends 1,500 miles away in Duluth, Minnesota having passed through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. Within Texas the I-35 splits into I-35E and I-35W passing through Dallas and Fort Worth respectiv
  • ITS advancement lays beyond benefit-cost analysis
    May 29, 2013
    Shelley Row, former Director of the US Department of Transportation’s ITS Joint Program Office, gives her views on the way forward for the industry. We, as intelligent transportation system (ITS) proponents and engineers, tend to be overly fixated on benefit-cost data. We want decisions to be made on logical grounds for which benefit-cost calculations are optimal. While benefit-cost data is necessary, it is not always sufficient. We can learn from our history where we see three broad groups of ITS deploymen
  • How digital navigation is key to managing congestion
    March 24, 2023
    Satnav – not costly civil engineering projects – might point us towards better management of congested road networks, argues David Metz of University College London