Institute for Transportation

About the research

The Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) places a high priority on both the safety and efficiency of travel for motorists within work zones across the state. Work zone projects can be complex taking years to plan and design with multiple phases and degrees of traffic disruptions. The data associated with a specific work zone can originate in multiple offices and entities from offices such as planning, design, construction, and operations to consultant and contractor field data.

The Iowa DOT recently dedicated a diverse team to consider how to enhance work zone performance. The top recommendation of this “Work Zone Management Service Layer Committee” was “data” and the essential need for a common platform to identify, integrate, and access all of the available work zone data from a central hub.

The current tasks needed for the Iowa DOT to develop the Iowa Work Zone Data Hub include matching the national data framework and developing use cases specific to Iowa. The future tasks include integrating readily available data sources and improving accessibility to other data sources, which will require changes in practice by the Iowa DOT to allow data to flow freely within the data hub and to deliver access to data across the agency. With the integrated data, back end process can be developed for specific use cases as well as the implementation of this process within the agency.