The Texas Transportation Institute Center for Ports & Waterways has won an International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) Award for Information Technology for MERMAID, the Internet-based clearinghouse used in locating maritime industry information. Every two years IAPH recognizes innovative projects, research and studies that are seen to provide value to the maritime transport and port industry. MERMAID received a gold award, the highest award given for its category. Award winners were announced at the 21st IAPH Biennial Conference held May 15-21, 1999, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
MERMAID (Maritime Economic Resources and Marine and Intermodal Directory) is a comprehensive and continuously growing collection of links to maritime information and provides summaries of information found within each of the links listed. Students working at the Center for Ports & Waterways, which is housed at Texas A&M University at Galveston, Texas, conduct thorough web searches to locate the latest and best maritime information existing on the Internet. To date, the site contains more than 1,200 links covering all aspects of the marine transportation system. The Internet address for MERMAID is http://maritime.tamu.edu.
The MERMAID project is funded through the Southwest Region University Transportation Center (SWUTC), a cooperative program involving Texas A&M University, the University of Texas-Austin and Texas Southern University that revolves around transportation research, technology transfer and education.
The Center for Ports & Waterways, established in 1995, is a multidisciplinary transportation research and educational unit of the Texas Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System.