Point of View: It's About Decisions: Improving Transportation Project Development with Visualization Technologies

Visualization technologies can reduce the ambiguities that arise in transportation projects and can improve decision making across the spectrum of participants, stakeholders, and professionals, by maintaining a shared awareness about the collective implications of decisions. The author advocates research and demonstration activities to develop an orchestrated understanding of visualization and how it can benefit transportation projects. He states that in highway project development, visualization is not only about three-dimensional geometric images, but may include the following: driving simulators that incorporate roadway geometry and traffic flow; traffic models; steel bridge models; laser and image scans of functioning bridges; and subterranean modeling.