Information Technology and Transport: What Research Needs to be Started Now?.

The ten week period from 9th October to 19th December 1982 was spent as Visiting Fellow at Leeds University at the Institute for Transport Studies; to examine the opportunities for research into the effects of information technology on transport and the interactions between them. This Fellowship was sponsored by the Science and Engineering Research Council (UK) and the Australian Road Research Board with additional support from Oxford Sytematics (Australia).

This report reviews the scope for research in this area; with particular emphasis on identifying workable project directions in the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS). Appropriate contacts and related work are given. Topics covered include data acquisition systems (including the potential for hand-held data capture devices; and the use of aural, visual and micro-wave wavelengths in capturing data): data processing and comunications policy appropriate to the Institute' s requirements; the role of knowledge-based systems; and the analysis of the relation between communications and transport activities in respect of time-use and expenditure patterns.

A number of the research proposals raised and put to ITS staff during the period are summarised in an Annex to this report (ITS technical Note TN 126). The summaries and texts of a series of seminars given during November-December 1982 at ITS are covered in a companion document (ITS Working Paper WP169).