Environmental Digital Data Repositories Project

摘要

This research body of work addresses two outstanding needs of the FDOT. The first need is to support the FDOT's Strategic Intermodal System (SIS) initiative and their efforts to define and manage existing and proposed multimodal centers, modes (air, sea port, rail), and their respective supporting facilities (state and local). The second need of the FDOT is to generate other useful products from existing digital GIS and image resources. The SIS database schemas designed for this project largely followed the logical design of an existing enterprise production database, the ETDM database, which GeoPlan maintains for the FDOT. The BRIDGE schema, created as part of the research, can be used as a model for future applications in which similar decision support tools are needed. Regarding existing digital imagery, both supervised and unsupervised image classifications were investigated to assess their potential efficiency in terms of time and costs to FDOT in the identification of hydric soils. The research herein finds divergent conclusions for the two major data repositories investigated - SIS Needs Projects and Digital Imagery. While integration of SIS Needs Project data can be reasonably achieved for better decision support in the FDOT's transportation planning process, automated processing of digital imagery data cannot be reasonably achieved and is not an efficient use of the FDOT's resources.