Texas Urban Triangle: Creating a Spatial Decision Support System for Mobility Policy and Investments that Shape the Sustainable Growth of Texas (UTCM 09-30-10)

This project developed a GIS-based Spatial Decision Support System to help local, metropolitan, and state jurisdictions and authorities in Texas understand the implications of transportation planning and investment decisions, and plan appropriately for the future. It provides an easily accessible, graphically represented, interactive database on infrastructural, demographic, environmental, agricultural, economic, hazard, and land use factors that affect transportation corridor location decisions. Specifically, the project team created an Internet-based spatial decision support system that will allow users to identify and visualize geographically those critical issues related to locating single mode or multi modal surface transportation corridors for freight and passengers. Decision makers will be able to test multiple attributes in the decision making model to compare multiple transportation corridor scenarios for optimal mobility based on the decision parameters developed in the model. Jurisdictions and transportation authorities will use this tool to guide future decisions on transportation and its impacts on urban growth in a sustainable manner so that the need for economic development is balanced with environmental protection and human health, safety, and welfare. The system also helps address important research questions related to where future growth will occur in the Texas Urban Triangle, and at what scale, densities, and uses and to study selected impacts of this growth. Finally, the SDSS demonstrates the usefulness of WebGIS in facilitating sustainable transportation planning, policy making, and investment decisions.