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Vice President Monthly Update
Jeff Linkous, PE. PS NACE Northeast Region
NACE often participates on Federal Agency task groups, councils and events that affect the work of local road professionals each day. Earlier this month, Clinton County, OH Deputy County Engineer Adam Fricke, P.E, P.S. represented NACE at an event in Washington, D.C. Below is his report. If you are interested in representing NACE in area you have expertise in, let us know so we can make sure we cover as many issue areas as possible.
Best,
Jeff Linkous, P.E, P.S.
Clinton County, OH Engineer
NACE Northeast Region VP
I want to thank you for the opportunity to represent N.A.C.E. at recently at the Meeting of Experts hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The Academies serve as a support and research agency for the various Federal agencies. This meeting was convened to help provide policy guidance to the US DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) on Digital High-Definition Mapping and Geospatial Decision Support Tool in the Transportation Sector.
The BTS claims to be the federal agency with the authority to develop standards and or mapping that could serve as the backbone for autonomous driving. They initiated this meeting to assess what, if any, benefit could be derived from federal involvement or oversight of digital mapping products. The BTS was specifically looking for feedback on the need for and feasibility of creating authoritative mapping that could be used as background data in autonomous vehicles, similar to the way that electronic navigational charts are used in the aviation and nautical spaces. The BTS emphasized a “light touch” and “soft nudge” approach, seeming to indicate that they do not currently have any immediate plans create any national datasets or specifications for datasets. Nothing in the conversations throughout the day seemed to identify any clear areas where federal involvement is urgently needed.
The meeting was attended by a diverse cross section of the mapping industry, including representation from commercial mapping companies (TomTom, Google Maps, HERE), data collectors (Sanborn, Woolpert), open source map providers (Overture, OpenStreetMap) state DOT’s (South Dakota, Iowa), local agencies (City of Seattle WA, NACE / Clinton County OH), the FAA, the NOAA, and representatives from ESRI as well as the insurance and legal industries. Notable absent where any representative from any automation manufacturers (GM, Tesla, etc.).
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