Assessment of Heavy Vehicle Impacts on Emergency Evacuation Operations

摘要

The National Transportation Research Center (NTRC), located between Knoxville and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was established in 2001. The NTRC is an alliance among Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); the University of Tennessee (UT); the U.S. Department ofEnergy (DOE); UT-Battelle, LLC; NTRC, Inc. (NTRCI); and the Development Corporation of Knox County. NTRC enables the integration and coordination of advanced transportation research programs for both government and industry. As part of its leadership support in co-operating ORNL, Battelle worked with ORNL and UT to form the Heavy Vehicle Safety Research Center (HVSRC) as a core initiative of the NTRC research and development agenda. Together, ORNL, UT, and the Development Corporation of Knox County formed NTRCI, a 50l(c)3 organization, established to provide an efficient and effective instrument for assembling resources and conducting joint research and development programs for industry and federal, state, and local government and industry. In fiscal year 2002, Congress specified that the NTRC receive a contract for $1 million to support heavy vehicle safety research. The research to be supported from this contract was a major part of the research conducted within the HVSRC over a one-year period of time. The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA's) Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) was to direct the activities ofthe contract through a cooperative research agreement with NTRCI. After consulting with TFHRC leadership, the NTRCI team developed a plan to conduct fundamental and groundbreaking research. 'Assessment of Heavy Vehicle Impacts on Emergency Evacuation Operations' is one of the research projects identified and carried out under this program.