Institute for Transportation

About the research

The ILT is a Map Objects/Visual Basic application for locate incidents such as crashes and traffic violations using a digital map. The ILT is an integrated component of an electronic forms management application called Traffic and Criminal Software (TraCS) developed by Iowa Department of Transportation. TraCS is currently a multi-state, collaborative effort involving law enforcement and transportation agencies from 23 States and a Canadian Province.

The ILT is designed for ease of use by users lacking prior technical exposure to GIS or GPS applications. The geographic data supporting the ILT serve as the basis for a multitude of programs and systems within Iowa, in contrast to the obsolete node-based referencing scheme previously used solely for the location of crashes. The ILT allowed the Iowa DOT to end the maintenance and production of nodes for crash location referencing purposes, and simultaneously, yield greater return on investment in geographic information system data developed and maintained for other purposes. The ILT has been customized for and deployed in several states (see the list of sponsors).

About the research

IMAT is analysis software for analyzing location- referenced data collected using Traffic and Criminal Software (TraCS) and Incident Location Tool (ILT) software. IMAT is similar in look and feel to the ILT software, leveraging approximately 75 percent of the same source code libraries. IMAT supports the same-day analysis of incident data collected by law enforcement officers, a central objective of the TraCS project. IMAT supports a collection of simple query tools, allowing a user unfamiliar with SQL to easily filter and chart collected safety and citation data attributes. It is similar in functionality to the Crash Mapping Analysis Tool (CMAT).