Texas Transportation Institute

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A critical process for the timely development and delivery of highway construction projects is the early identification and depiction of utility interests that may interfere with proposed highway facilities. The effective management of such utility interests or conflicts involves utility relocation (or design changes), inspection and documentation. The large number of stakeholders and the magnitude of the process results in an enormous amount of data in the form of communications, agreements, contracts, permits, maps, schematics, images, design files and other documents. Despite substantial data exchange between stakeholders, there are currently no standards for the exchange of utility data/information in the project development process. The proposed research will address this issue by analyzing specific information flows and data needs to determine data models and by developing a prototype utility conflict data management system. More specifically, the research will perform a comprehensive analysis of utility conflict data/information flows between utility accommodation stakeholders in the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) project development process, develop data models to accommodate work and data flows between such stakeholders, develop a prototype system for the management of utility conflict data, and develop a tool for the visualization and analysis of utility conflicts within the prototype utility conflict data management system.