North Carolina DoT wins top award for hurricane response

North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDoT) has won a major award for its work responding to Hurricane Florence last year. The organisation was the overall trophy winner – up against 60 other submissions - at the first annual Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Awards, run by the US National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE). The gong was presented to Jennifer Portanova, NCDoT state systems operations engineer, at the 2019 Transportation Research Board annual meeting
January 16, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

4775 North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDoT) has won a major award for its work responding to Hurricane Florence last year.

The organisation was the overall trophy winner – up against 60 other submissions - at the first annual Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Awards, run by the US National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE).

The gong was presented to Jennifer Portanova, NCDoT state systems operations engineer, at the 2019 856 Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, DC this week.

Last September, more than a million people were safely evacuated in advance of the storm and NCDoT continued to keep the public informed of road closures and collapses as it swept through the US state.

“There’s no doubt, lives were saved because of the crucial work done by our colleagues at NCDoT,” says NOCoE managing director Patrick Son. “Their preparation and response were amazing, coordinating, moving and informing millions of people. This is a case where things could have gone horribly wrong and instead, the coalition of TSMO practitioners, traffic managers, first responders and partners had an incredibly positive outcome.”

He added that the quality of submissions “highlights the growing understanding and influence of TSMO as a saver of lives, time and money”.

As well as taking the top prize, NCDoT won the ‘Major incident or special event planning and response’ category. Other winners were:

• Improving your agency’s TSMO capabilities – ITS Heartland Chapter of ITS America and HDR - ITS Heartland’s TSMO University Educational Program

• Best TSMO project (creative solution) – Arizona Department of Transportation - US-60 Restripe Project

• Public Communications – Oregon Department of Transportation - @OregonTIMResponders

Air Quality & Weather Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Entries open for ITS America’s 10th student essay competition
    January 18, 2019
    US college and university students are being invited to submit their thoughts on the future of mobility in an ITS America scheme which offers a $1,000 prize. Submissions will be accepted until 14 April for the competition, which is sponsored by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). As well as the cash, the winner will get a paid trip to Washington, DC for the ITS America 2019 annual meeting on 4-7 June. They will need to write something on the topic: “How do you envision disruptive technologies impact
    Read More
  • RCA designs mobility for life
    June 11, 2019
    The Royal College of Art is a design powerhouse, and researcher Artur Mausbach is turning his attention to what future mobility will look – and feel – like. Adam Hill finds out more The name Royal College of Art (RCA) does not immediately bring to mind images of industrial design. But past alumni of this prestigious London institution include vacuum cleaner king James Dyson as well as that former enfant terrible of the artistic world, Tracey Emin: the RCA has always had a foot in both camps. And now it
    Read More
  • Outsourcing security weakness for Sweden’s driver and vehicle data
    October 24, 2017
    The security of driver and vehicle data hit the headlines this summer in Sweden and its authorities are still dealing with the fallout. David Crawford reports. epercussions from Sweden’s vehicle data outsourcing scandal continue to reverberate. Transportstyrelsen, the government’s transport agency, came under fire this summer for risking the personal security of over five million motorists by failing to implement full security checks on personnel in other countries to whom individual work packages could
    Read More
  • Interoperability: towards the new frontier
    October 22, 2018
    After six years of intensive research, testing and negotiation, the US tolling industry is well on its way to groundbreaking results in the effort to establish regional - and eventually national - toll interoperability, says IBTTA’s Bill Cramer. Interoperability has been a high priority on the US tolling industry’s agenda for more than a decade. But several factors made it a uniquely complex issue to resolve - including the number of agencies involved, the significant investments those agencies had already
    Read More

Highlighted Content