Vol 38 No 1.2

Welcome to a special series of digital newsletters during COVID-19.

In this Issue

Meredith Camp named LTAP's new Training Specialist
Annual Operations Reports
Local Transportation Asset Management Conference - October 2020
Featured Article: Cybersecurity on the Information-Enabled Superhighway

Welcome

The weather is starting to improve, and traffic volumes are increasing. As we move into Stage 2 of the Back On Track Indiana plan, more and more Hoosiers will begin to travel our roads to support our local businesses. Now is the time to stress to work crews the importance of maintaining safe work zones, and not letting down their guard. If you were able to participate in the LTAP Work Zone Safety webinar this past week, you heard Todd Morrison, our Work Zone Safety Circuit Rider, tell workers to keep their heads on swivels and to look out for fellow workers. What great advice! If you missed our series of Temporary Traffic Control webinars, no worries, we are happy to send you the recording and related resource materials. Just send an email request to inltap@purdue.edu.

If you have not heard the wonderful news, Meredith Camp has been promoted to the Indiana LTAP Training Specialist. Meredith is taking over the training program during a challenging time, when our traditional training plan has been set aside and we are rapidly moving to offer the same high-quality content in an online setting. In addition to spearheading this move to online learning, Meredith will also oversee a project to build and deploy a custom learning management system that will transform how the LTAP community accesses training and online content.

As Meredith becomes even more familiar with her new role, she will come to realize the secret to success as an LTAP training specialist: the Training Specialist is never alone; there is an entire community of city, town, and county workers behind her, one hundred percent. This group are willing to jump in to help with no questions asked. Congratulations Meredith, and best of luck! You have our full support

To read the official announcement about Meredith, click here.

Annual Operations Report

The Annual Operations Report (AOR) is a financial report required by the Indiana State Board of Accounts that details the receipts and disbursements for our County and Municipal highway and street departments. This financial information can be used in combination with condition data on how our local agencies are funded, to what extent, and what’s the resulting effect on our road and bridge conditions. This gives our state and local elected officials valuable data on our investment in our transportation system. The AOR is due every year on June 1 by each county and every municipality with a population over 15,000 people. The AOR is a spreadsheet form that was updated this year to account for the MVH restricted and unrestricted sub funds. The spreadsheet form is then required to be uploaded to the LTAP Data Management System (DMS). There are some short youtube videos under the “Tools” then under “Resources” section in the DMS on how to use the DMS and how to fill out the AOR. If you have further questions on the use of the DMS and the AOR, please contact Patrick Conner at: connerp@purdue.edu.

Local Transportation Asset Management Conference

We are excited to announce our new Local Transportation Asset Management Conference (LTAM)! The conference will replace the Indiana County Bridge Conference. The LTAM Conference will be held at Purdue University October 20-21, 2020. We will maintain the high quality training, sessions, and demonstrations we have had at the County Bridge Conference in and add on to it in other transportation areas. The conference will open up to other areas of interest including: pavement preservation, fleet management, asset management data collection, and asset management analysis and tools to name a few. The goal of the conference is to provide wide variety of training that is applicable for transportation providers, demonstrations, updates from our State and Federal transportation authorities, as well as opportunities for networking and learning from one another.

Please fill out this survey by July 1, 2020 to help make this conference as valuable to local agencies that we can.

Featured Article: Cybersecurity on the Information-Enabled Superhighway

By Joe Beckman, Lead Information Security Analyst, cyberTAP, Purdue University

Visions of the future of human transportation have existed as long as there have been people to envision it. Current visions of the future of our transportation include high-speed, subterranean tubes that accommodate passenger “pods”, as well as electric and driver-less cars, among others. Regardless of the direction our transportation systems ultimately take, we can be confident that transportation will be driven by the collection and transmission of electronic data by sensors and computer control of at least some aspects of transportation systems. We can also be confident that transportation systems will need to have the flexibility to change to meet yet unforeseen demands of travelers. In fact, information technology (IT) has been used in open road tolling, for directional switching of roadway lanes, and in control of traffic signals as the vehicle by which flexibility has been added to roadway infrastructure. In exchange for this flexibility, those responsible for the infrastructure now have the additional responsibility of managing the complexities of information systems, including the security of those systems. As a result, maintaining safe and secure roadways now requires consideration of the role played by IT systems and cybersecurity in: roadway and road system design, management, and in the training of those who maintain roads and road systems. Because the intersection of roadway and IT systems is well described as systems-of-systems (SoS), this article discusses cybersecurity considerations in roadway design, management, and the training of personnel in terms of SoS concepts.

LTAP News

Updated rural county crash data through 2019 will be available soon, including crash summaries and maps showing any “hot spots.” If you would like yours now, please contact Laura Slusher (lslusher@purdue.edu). Town and City crash data available upon request.
Indiana LTAP's website has created a COVID-19 Resources page (to be updated regularly).
Learn more about the LTAP Direct Mobile App!