The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and Enhancements (2018)

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53 The Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) is a tool developed and maintained by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) to support access to and discovery of information pro- duced by the members of the TRB. The potential value and role of the Thesaurus have grown over the last decade as the products and services of TRB have expanded and as information management methods and tools have developed. In 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the state departments of transportation (DOTs) sponsored a project to assess the current state of the TRT and to define its strategic future development. The objective of this project was to enhance the TRT by determining the vision and requirements for the future of the TRT. It includes an assessment of the ability of the current thesaurus content, procedures, and products to meet those requirements and the establishment of a strategic plan and short-term actions to achieve the requirements. Research Strategy The objective of this project was to enhance the TRT by defining future strategies that will help TRB to achieve its vision and mission. To accomplish this, the project team conducted an assessment of the current thesaurus. This strategic plan lays out a set of strategies and action items that will ensure the TRT continues to be a vital element of TRB’s mission and vision that meet the expectations of TRB members and the transportation community. The assessment is presented as a high-level situational analysis and is presented in the context of TRB’s mission, vision, and future strategies. The TRT was initially developed under NCHRP Project 20-32 (2001) to provide a tool to improve the indexing and retrieval of transportation information. This project produced an updated structure and content, as well as a user’s guide to support the implementation and use of the TRT. The initial project leveraged the Viewer software developed by CDB Enterprises in 1994/95. While the original design was intended to be ANSI/NISO Z39.19 compliant, the use of the Viewer software and its limited application as a component of search resulted in a suboptimal thesaurus application. In 2007, NCHRP Project 20-70 was undertaken to develop a database at TRB that would allow TRB to maintain the authoritative version of the TRT in-house (e.g., to eliminate the external contractor role), to integrate the TRT with the then-new Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) system for creating catalog records, and to publish the TRT on the Internet. Seven specific tasks were identified and completed. This project resulted in the current version of the TRT (http://trb.trt.org). When this project was launched, the archi- tectural design was guided by the TRIS database. Alignment with ANSI/NISO Z39.19 and/or ISO 25964 standards was not undertaken. These standards were not provided to the contrac- tor as design specifications. A p p e n d i x A TRT Strategic Plan

54 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements In 2008, NCHRP Project 20-79 was launched. This project focused on the addition of AASHTO definitions to the TRT and was completed in 2009. This project was implemented in the digital version of the TRT, a component of TRIS. While the project resulted in the integration of some existing definitions, a comprehensive strategy for the use and inclusion of definitions was not developed. Since 2009, two additional NCHRP research projects have addressed or mentioned the TRT, including NCHRP Project 20-90 and NCHRP Project 20-97. NCHRP 20-90 was launched in 2011 and completed in 2013 by Cambridge Systematics. The objective of the research was to prepare guidance describing the practices that state DOTs could use for capture, preserva- tion, search, retrieval, and governance of transportation data and information, and strategies and actions a DOT could follow to implement such practices. As part of this broader project, there was a small targeted review of the TRT as a cataloging tool. While some suggestions were offered to enhance the TRT, we note that the goal was not to provide a comprehensive review of the thesaurus. NCHRP Project 20-97 referenced the TRT as a tool that was designed to sup- port findability of transportation information. The goal of this project, though, was to improve the findability of state DOT information by defining an information management framework, describing good practices for organizing and classifying information, and developing federated search procedures. The TRT was mentioned but was not treated or leveraged in depth for this research project. Since 2011, the state DOTs have also provided feedback and comments on the TRT, in particular the relevance of TRT’s content and usability and ease of access to the resource. All of these earlier projects and reports were leveraged in NCHRP Project 20-109. It is the first comprehensive assessment of the TRT. The assessment criteria are included in Appendix C of this report and the full assessment can be found in NCHRP Project 20-109 Interim Report 1. The assessment and its contextualization in TRB’s broader mission, vision, goals, and core services are the foundation for this strategic plan. Mission, Vision, Goals, and Core Services of the Transportation Research Board The current state and future direction of the TRT is best understood in the context of TRB’s mission, goals, and strategies. According to TRB’s Strategic Plan, its mission is . . . to increase the benefits that transportation contributes to society by providing leadership in trans- portation innovation and progress through research and information exchange, conducted within a setting that is objective, interdisciplinary, and multimodal. TRB, as an organization, has been a major source of information and research results per- taining to highways since the 1920s (although the organization has been known as TRB only since 1974). Information and research has been continuously disseminated through meetings of standing committees, the production of publications, and convening an annual meeting. The shift to a broader focus on transportation in 1974 was recognition of the increasingly multi- modal nature of transportation. Over the years, TRB’s portfolio of services has continued to grow. The organization annually engages more than 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other trans- portation researchers and practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their expertise as volunteers by participating on TRB committees, panels, and task forces. TRB provides services and products that represent all major modes of transporta- tion and a range of technical disciplines including engineering, planning, research, operations, policy, and more. The strategic direction of the TRT should align with and support the mission and strategic goals of the organization. The TRT must have a broad scope and coverage to match the organization’s mission, and it must represent the language and vocabulary used by many diverse stakeholders.

TRT Strategic plan 55 TRB’s vision statement tells us that “TRB is where the nation’s leaders and the transportation community turn for research, innovation, collaboration, and advice on emerging and critical transportation issues” (www.trb.org/AboutTRB/StrategicPlan1.aspx). The intent is for TRB to be impactful, informative, and resourceful. To be informative, TRB generates and disseminates information on long-term issues of strategic, national, and international importance, as well as on practical, technical information and shorter-term policy issues. To be resourceful, TRB delivers information and research efficiently and effectively to inform decisions on investments, practices, and policies and promotes collaboration across the diversity of participants in TRB programs and activities. To be impactful, TRB identifies emerging issues, brings practitioners and researchers together to promote innovation in transportation, and provides government with advice on major transportation issues. The TRT does not currently have a vision statement. A vision statement has been proposed that aligns with TRB’s vision and is tied to the TRT’s future strategies. TRB achieves its mission and vision through eight distinct goals. Of the eight, three pertain directly to the TRT (Goals 2, 4, and 7). Two other goals leverage the value and support of the TRT indirectly (Goals 3 and 5).These goals are described as the following: • Goal 2. Conduct and promote knowledge creation and dissemination, especially on innova- tive practices and technologies in the transportation sector. The TRT supports this goal by representing and promoting the language of transportation across the TRB and representing all variations of that language across the globe. The TRT’s strategic direction has a direct relationship to TRB’s efforts to achieve this goal. • Goal 3. Provide timely and informed advice on transportation and transportation-related issues to decision makers and others who are responsible for multimodal transportation sys- tems. The TRT can serve as a tool for bridging the languages of multiple perspectives, roles, and modes of transportation. The TRT’s strategic direction has a direct relationship to TRB’s ability to achieve this goal. • Goal 4. Act as an effective and impartial forum for the exchange of knowledge and information, including transportation and its relationship with social, economic, environmental, and other issues. The TRT supports this goal by ensuring that all aspects of the field of transportation—its theory and practical applications—are represented in the language of transportation. The TRT’s strategic direction has a direct relationship to TRB’s efforts to achieve this goal. • Goal 5. Promote collaboration on transportation research, education, and technology trans- fer at international, national, regional, state, and local levels; across public and private sec- tors; and with transportation providers, customers, and other stakeholders. The TRT can play a vital role in supporting effective communication across these functions, geographical locations, and sectors. • Goal 7. Conduct and promote communications efforts to enhance the awareness of trans- portation research and its contributions to innovation and progress in transportation. Com- munication is grounded in language, and the language of transportation includes all stages of the life cycle of transportation, all modes, and all points of integration with and impact on society. The TRT can contribute to TRB’s ability to achieve this goal. The role of information is also evident in TRB’s core services, which are essential to achieving its goals. TRB’s core services include (1) providing a forum for information exchange, (2) man- aging research programs, (3) developing policy analysis based on objective data and research, and (4) disseminating transportation research results. Each of these four core services is heav- ily focused on information and research results. The TRT is a critical enabling tool supporting access to and discovery of TRB’s information. It is directly relevant to all four core services: • Providing a forum for information exchange. The TRT must serve as an enabling tool for access and discovery of the information generated by the organization’s 200 standing

56 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements committees, annual meeting, and specialty conferences (Core Service 1). The members and participants of these forums represent global and local perspectives on transportation issues, multiple languages, and different ways of talking about common issues. Information is also exchanged among TRB members, volunteers, affiliates, and other interested parties through webinars, e-newsletters, and social media. This presents a rich information management envi- ronment for TRB and a challenging role for the TRT. • Managing research programs. TRB administers federally funded applied research programs on behalf of other organizations (Core Service 2), including NCHRP, FHWA, ACRP, TCRP, FTA, the Congressional Research Program (related to freight, rail, and hazardous materials), the Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) programs, and the Strategic High- way Research Program (SHRP 2). These research programs represent a broad scope of trans- portation issues, a rich set of stakeholders, and a diverse array of domain-specific languages. The TRT is critical to achieving this goal as it provides a tool to integrate and translate across these domains. • Developing policy analysis based on objective data and research. TRB has conducted more than 100 studies at the request of Congress, federal agencies, the states, and other organiza- tions on complex and sometimes controversial transportation topics of national importance (Core Service 3). Research requires access to TRB and non-TRB data, information, and exper- tise. The TRT is a potentially valuable tool for finding and accessing these resources regardless of where they reside. • Disseminating transportation research results. The TRT is a key information access and discovery tool for TRB members and others looking for TRB products and services (Core Service 4). TRB disseminates transportation research results in several different types of documents and formats. TRB manages and maintains TRID—the world’s largest and most comprehensive bibliographic resource for transportation information. The TRT does and can play an increasingly effective role in facilitating search and discovery in TRIS. The TRB’s Strategic Plan and its core services make a clear and obvious case for strong information management, information access, and discovery. The TRT is a critical enabler for TRB’s achievement of its mission, vision, and goals. It is clear to the stakeholders consulted in this project that the TRT is a critical success factor in TRB’s future. The challenge is to ensure that the strategic direction of the TRT aligns with the strategic direction of the TRB. TRB Situational Analysis and Role of TRT As part of the strategic planning process, TRB recently undertook an extensive review of the transportation environment and TRB’s current activities. An environmental scan was conducted to identify the factors influencing the strategic direction of the organization. An examination of the strengths, opportunities, limitations, and challenges (rewording the classic SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) was conducted in consul- tation with TRB stakeholders. A survey and a set of focus groups involved the full array of TRB leaders, including TRB Executive Committee and Technical Activities Council members, volunteer chairs of TRB standing committees and research panels, representatives of the Uni- versity Transportation Centers, and TRB staff. As TRB moves forward, the TRT must also move forward. Four of the opportunities in the TRB Strategic Plan pertain to the TRT: 1. The TRB can uniquely address critical issues in transportation that are crosscutting and that have far-reaching impact. The TRT is a language and vocabulary tool that can facilitate the crosscutting nature of transportation in its expanded scope and coverage. 2. The emergence of new services, service providers, and institutional paradigms can bring in new partners and financial sponsors. Increasing international interest and engage-

TRT Strategic plan 57 ment in TRB can facilitate the diversification of the organization and the breadth and depth of its dialog. The project team understands that there is interest in working with the TRT in both the private sector (i.e., transportation industry, transportation manufacturing, insurance, etc.) and the public sector. There are opportunities for building new partner- ships across these different communities. As a core language tool, the TRT is pivotal for facilitating multilingual conversations and for enabling access to transportation informa- tion that is published in all of the languages of transportation. 3. Leveraging technology to create and market new products and to improve communica- tions with its volunteers and customers. It is not unusual for a 20th century traditional thesaurus to transition to a 21st century semantic tool to support smart search, automated categorization, automated indexing and abstracting, and other intelligent applications. 4. Implementing new revenue-generating services and activities. As a 21st century semantic tool, the TRT provides a foundation from which to expand current and future products and services in an efficient and effective way. The TRT can also provide a foundation for community-based development of new products and services. The TRT can support two TRB challenges identified in the situational analysis: 1. Continuing competition with other organizations and increasing competition with other emerging avenues for information dissemination. The project team observed this challenge during the assessment. There has been an explosion of smart search systems and of com- mercial databases producing and promoting transportation-related information since the TRT was first conceived and developed. In addition, there has been an explosion of relevant transportation information at the state and local levels that is of value to the broader com- munity. This presents two opportunities for the TRT—it must be increasingly diverse in order to represent and connect local and regional variations of language, and it must be increasingly granular to represent the type of applied, operational, and administrative language used by transportation practitioners. It must go beyond the “research” perspective. 2. Society’s growing desire and expectation for quick answers to complex questions. At the present time, the TRT is used for formal human indexing, but there is potential for it to serve a role in intelligent discovery systems. Transportation Research Thesaurus— Mission,Vision, and Goals The TRT is supported by two publicly available versions of a mission statement. The first is from the TRT home page (http://trt.trb.org) and reflects the historical intent from the late 1990s: “The Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) is a tool to improve the indexing and retrieval of transportation information. The thesaurus covers all modes and aspects of transpor- tation. The TRT’s purpose is to provide a common and consistent language between producers and users of transportation information.” The second mission statement is found on the web page “About the TRT” section, which describes the TRT’s mission this way: “. . . to provide a common and consistent language between producers and users of the Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) Database (https://trid.trb.org). The thesaurus is currently also used as an indexing tool for federal, state and university collections.” This second mission statement is more comprehensive and better suited to a strategic future for the TRT. While the TRT has a mission statement, it has neither a published vision nor goals. Over time, the development of the TRT has not kept pace with the mission, vision, and strategies of TRB and the transportation community that it serves. The original warrant, as represented in the first mission statement, was very well defined and suited to its context within TRB. Over the years,

58 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements though, the interpretation and implementation of that warrant has varied and is not consistent with the second mission statement. In addition, while the field of information management and discovery has made significant advances, the TRT has remained largely an operational tool for indexers and catalogers. The potential for the TRT in the 21st century information environment is significant. NCHRP Project 20-109 identifies four strategic futures for the TRT. These strategic futures constitute a vision for the TRT that is consistent with the vision of the TRB and reflects the current and future state of information management, search, and discovery (Figure A-1). Strategy 1 positions TRB to contribute directly to TRB’s future vision. Strategy 2 enhances TRB’s vision to be an informative organization. Strategy 3 enables TRB to be resourceful and effective in delivering services. In Strategy 4, the TRT is directly impacting TRB’s information role. Each of these strategies adds exponentially to TRB’s vision and mission. Situational Analysis of the TRT and All Previous Evaluations As of December 2016, the TRT contained a total of 12,125 terms, 9,591 of which were approved for indexing in TRIS and 2,534 of which were non-approved, lead-in terms. These terms were spread across 21 facets or categories (Figure A-2). The most heavily developed and used vocabularies are Vehicles and Equipment (Facet Q), Materials (Facet R), and Facilities (Facet P). No current facets are aligned with or focused on modes of transportation. Many of the vocabularies are underdeveloped in terms of 21st century trans- portation issues (e.g., management topics, intelligent transportation topics, economic and social aspects, etc.). In order to gain a sense of the TRT’s current status and its capabilities to sup- port the mission of TRB, the project team defined an assessment framework that included five dimensions. The five dimensions included (a) thesaurus content, (b) thesaurus access and use, (c) thesaurus governance processes, (d) thesaurus scope and coverage, and (e) thesaurus Figure A-1. NCHRP Project 20-109 strategic vision for the TRT.

TRT Strategic plan 59 application architecture. Based on established practices in the peer-reviewed literature and the research team’s experience, 134 criteria were identified across the dimension. In addition, as the data collection progressed, an additional 32 criteria were identified pertinent to the TRT’s current context. Data to support the 166 criteria were collected from five sources, including: • A transformed working copy of the TRT that enabled the research team to generate reports and statistics, • Stakeholder interviews and feedback, • Online data collection from Transportation Librarians (in lieu of interviews), • Targeted input on information sources and use practices from Subject Matter Experts, and • Focused searching of peer transportation information sources. A high-level summary of the assessment is provided here in the form of a situational analy- sis. The situational analysis identifies strengths, opportunities, and challenges or weaknesses that should be addressed. The strategies proposed in this plan derive from the assessment. The detailed assessment methodology and criteria are presented in Appendix C of this report. The project team identified strengths of the TRT across all five dimensions of the assessment framework (Figure A-3). Specifically, we found: • A rich foundation of thesaurus terms focused primarily on road transportation, • Strong use by and support from indexers and catalogers of transportation information, • Strong participation by the library community in the current governance model, • Strong interest in the potential of the TRT among subject matter experts who were previ- ously unaware of the TRT. The project team identified several opportunities for the TRT, primarily focused around scope and coverage and architecture. These opportunities are described below: • Search tests suggest there are significant opportunities to expand the scope and coverage of the TRT by leveraging literary warrant more extensively through the integration of transportation- focused terms from search logs, commercial sources, and other transportation vocabularies. Transportation (Facet A) Transportation Operations (Facet B) Management and Operations (Facet C) Communications and Control (Facet D) Planning and Design (Facet E) Construction and Maintenance (Facet F) Testing (Facet G) Safety and Security (Facet H) Environment (Facet J) Economic and Social Factors (Facet K) Persons and Personal Characteristics (Facet M) Organizations (Facet N) Facilities (Facet P) Vehicles and Equipment (Facet Q) Materials (Facet R) Physical Phenomena (Facet S) Disciplines (Facet T) Mathematics (Facet U) Areas and Regions (Facet V) Time (Facet W) Information Management (Facet X) Figure A-2. TRT’s 21 facets.

60 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements • Gaps in coverage when we compared the TRT terms to other transportation thesauri and controlled vocabularies. While the overall “no match” rate was high, there is opportunity in the potential links between terms from other thesauri and terms in the TRT. • Shift the focus of the management of the TRT from term levels to facet level and ensure that there are clearly defined roles and responsibilities for managing and developing each facet. Consult with subject matter experts as part of the development process to ensure that current topics and issues are included in the thesaurus when they are discussed. • There are many functions that are not currently provided within this context. The opportunity here is to review these functions, especially those that support interoperability, export, and governance reporting to determine how the architecture might be supplemented to address more of the requirements in this dimension. The assessment surfaced challenges across all five dimensions of the framework. While these are categorized as weaknesses, the project team treated them as opportunities in developing future strategies. The TRT content challenges include • Non-standard use of thesaurus relationships, particularly NT/BT and RT/Hierarchical. • Insufficient metadata for individual terms to support the management of terms. • Enumerated hierarchy as fundamental structure of the TRT. • Lack of functional thesaurus management capabilities. • Lack of lifecycle management/term workflow capabilities in the system. Challenges in the access and usability dimension were noteworthy and speak to the TRT’s ability to serve as an effective tool for supporting the information and knowledge-related goals of TRB. These weaknesses include • Low usage rates of the TRT terms in searching within TRID and low incidence of these terms in other transportation-related repositories and sources. • Lack of awareness of the TRT among subject matter experts. • Use of the TRT-guided searching in TRID is low. • TRID content is discovered through Google redirects—indexing terms do not generally align with terms in search logs. IM = information management Figure A-3. Assessment framework for TRT.

TRT Strategic plan 61 • Varied rates of use of terms across facets. Terms with greater specificity appear to more often align with search terms than the more general terms. • Terms that are not transportation related or transportation specific (contextualized for transportation perspectives) are used for indexing but not for searching. Disconnect between the rate at which terms are used for indexing and the rate at which they are searched. • Rigid design of the TRT for use in TRID constrains its use outside of its current context. As the state level IM/KM environment has developed, there are more opportunities to use the TRT outside of TRID. The structure, though, constrains this. • Hierarchy is difficult to navigate by end users. Hierarchical structure is rarely used by indexers, librarians, or searchers. Subject matter experts also commented that it does not reflect their view of their domains. • Posted functionality does not work—Key Word In Context and Key Word Out of Context are simple launched searches and do not reflect traditional thesaurus functions. While governance is an area of strength in its engagement of the library and information sci- ence community, it also exposes a weakness in the lack of representation of transportation sub- ject matter experts. The architecture and design factors also introduce challenges to managing the TRT at a facet rather than a term level. The project team offers several challenges that should be treated as opportunities for improvement: • Because the TRT is designed to support TRID as an explicit indexing and guided search tool, it lacks basic thesaurus management functions. Without these functions, it is difficult to address the usability weaknesses. • Engagement with subject matter experts or the general membership of TRB was a weak area. • Level of focus of governance is on individual terms. Governance to ensure that the TRT was aligned with the TRB language was an area of weakness. • Found that the functional design of the TRT was not conducive to managing at the facet level. • Change management is difficult in the current architecture, and this constrains the decisions made by governance groups. • Governance bodies do not include transportation experts but rather draw primarily from library and information science. There is a need for transportation expertise to be drawn into the governance and oversight process. • There is a term suggestion page on the TRT home page, but the decision process and the feedback loop are not tightly integrated. There is no formal mechanism to respond to indi- viduals who have submitted terms. And, there is no formal explanation of why a term was not accepted. Also, the current application does not allow the tracking of proposed but not approved terms. • Placement of a proposed term in the hierarchy is sometimes a key decision point. • The current application does not provide easy generation of management reports that might inform governance processes or serve to communicate with the TRB community. A major weakness is the lack of adherence of the TRT to ISO 25964, the international stan- dard for thesaurus structures and functions. This presents a challenge for exchanging content with the broader community. The current scope and coverage of the TRT is another note- worthy weakness. At this time, the TRT does not provide consistent coverage of the transportation topics and functions that are addressed by TRB’s annual and specialty conferences. Specifically, the project team made the following observations: • Literary warrant was well defined when the TRT was created but the implementation of the TRT has not maintained the spirit of that warrant. The TRT’s scope and coverage is not comprehensively aligned with TRB’s current coverage of the field. The research team notes

62 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements that the overall results of this section suggest a shift to a proactive literary warrant strategy to support the TRT. • Confusion among the library and information science community supporting the TRT as to whether it is a thesaurus or a classification scheme. A classification scheme defines “classes” or groups of things. It is used to create collections of content that treat the class in a substantive way (i.e., a library collection is physically organized into classes on the shelf). A thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary of concepts and terms that is intended to index the concepts that are treated inside a single content object (i.e., think of the concepts that are included in a back-of- the-book index). In addition to simply exposing the concepts, a thesaurus tells us something about how the concepts relate to one another in a particular context. The confusion in the library and information science community derives from the confounded use of terms and classes as subject headings in traditional library catalogs. As the constraints of those catalogs are no longer an overriding factor in the design of search systems, we can use thesauri and clas- sification schemes to their best advantage. • Lack of modal-specific vocabularies was a clear weakness identified by subject matter experts. • The TRT aims to be modal agnostic, but the result is a non-modal treatment of transpor- tation information and research. Modal agnostic in a different architecture can support modal-specific, multimodal, economic, and social perspectives, as well as life cycle stages, etc. However, the current hierarchical architecture precludes this flexibility. • Search tests and Google Analytics reports suggest that there are gaps in coverage between what searchers are looking for and what the TRT is covering. • Search tests also highlighted the generic nature of many terms in the TRT and gaps of transportation-specific terms. Of particular note was the lack of alignment of the TRT’s overall structure with TRB Annual Meeting program areas. • A simple review of the 21 facets of the TRT surfaced only two that would be recognized as transportation-focused from their names. Nineteen of the facets are generic and might be understood to be part of any other controlled vocabulary. While there is only one general weakness or challenge described for architecture, the archi- tecture has broad impacts for the current and future development of the TRT. In essence, the current architecture is constrained by the tight coupling of the TRT to TRID indexing and searching. This is a 1990s architectural solution, which is not aligned with current commercially available thesaurus management applications. This architecture negatively impacts all other dimensions of the framework. TRT Future Strategies The project team prepared five use case scenarios as part of the assessment and to frame the discussion of future goals and objectives. The use cases have been transformed to strate- gies for this stage of the project. Four of the five strategies propose enhancements to the TRT that will address weaknesses and challenges and offer opportunities to support TRB’s infor- mation mission, vision, and goals (Figure A-4). Strategy 0 represents a “no change” status quo option that essentially freezes the TRT in its current architecture and role as a search component of TRID. Strategy 1 is a springboard strategy which provides a new platform from which the TRT may generate additional value for the TRB community. Strategy 1 presents a first step forward in developing additional noteworthy value in the area of information access and discovery. This strategy has the potential to expand the coverage of transportation information and to increase the sophistication of access and discovery. Strategy 2 describes an expanded role for TRT in the broader context of access to and discovery of transporta- tion data and information. Strategy 3 describes additional products and services that may

TRT Strategic plan 63 be offered by TRB, leveraging the Thesaurus as a core component of automated indexing, categorization, and abstracting applications. Finally, Strategy 4 describes a situation where the Thesaurus is a catalyst for community-based product and service development. Strategy 0—No Change, No Enhancement This strategy focuses on small changes that can be made to the current version of the TRT as it is designed within TRID (Figure A-5). This is a “no change” option, which essentially does not speak to a strategic direction for the TRT’s future. It assumes that in the future the TRT may not continue to play a role. This strategy does not propose an expanded role for the TRT in the TRB information environment in the future. The enumerated hierarchy remains the main architec- tural and functional design feature of the TRT. Any new value that is achieved is outside of the context of the TRT in TRID. Strategy 0 aligns with Use Case 1 in Interim Technical Report #1. Proposed action items are the following: 1. Develop a fully elaborated Guiding Principles and Best Practices document that details poli- cies and practices pertaining to (1) individual thesaurus term selections and the basis for Figure A-4. Future strategies for the TRT. Figure A-5. Strategy 0—no change, no enhancement to TRT.

64 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements inclusion/exclusion; (2) the use of ISO-standard thesaurus relationships; (3) forms of terms (i.e., concepts rather than single words, exclusion of stand-alone adverbs and adjectives, etc.); and (4) business rules imposed by TRID search. 2. Develop a strategy for the inclusion and use of synonyms, specifically regional synonyms, full and quasi-equivalence, abbreviations, acronyms, and lexical variants. 3. Review all previously non-approved terms for inclusion as synonyms. 4. Reduce or eliminate the use of parenthetical qualifiers. 5. Reduce or eliminate the use of structural terms. 6. Review selected facets for transportation-specific enhancement (Facet A, B, C, D). 7. Develop New Term Tracker to support suggestion and feedback on new terms. 8. Develop an on-site and online workshop on standard thesaurus practices for the transporta- tion community. 9. Develop a strategy to improve awareness of the TRT throughout TRB. 10. Develop an ISO-compliant, exportable version of the TRT for other TRB members to work with. This involves mapping the TRT/TRID database structure and the hierarchy to relationships that are definable and understandable to other thesaurus management tools. Strategy 1: New ISO-Compliant Master Version of TRT Strategy 1 is a springboard that moves the TRT to a standards-based platform from which it can pursue a range of opportunities (Figure A-6). This strategy assumes that the TRT has a strong and vibrant future supporting TRB’s mission and vision. This strategy shifts the TRT master version from its current function in TRID to an ISO-compliant thesaurus management application. The relationship with TRID remains strongly in place, and the functionality of TRID is maintained. In this scenario, TRID becomes a consuming system that draws content from the TRT through a new web services function. There are several options for supporting web services, ranging from simple extract/transfer/load of content from TRT into TRID to the more sophisticated direct and on-demand query of TRT content by TRID via APIs (e.g., application programmer interfaces). The former may be more appropriate for a proof of concept and the latter for a full implementa- tion, when a formally procured thesaurus management tool is in place. We understand that the Figure A-6. Strategy 1—new ISO-compliant master version of TRT.

TRT Strategic plan 65 preference by the TRT team is for the interactive query option. The current functionality of the TRT within TRID will be decommissioned and archived. A new ISO 25964 version of the TRT is implemented in a new commercial off-the-shelf thesaurus management application. A new master version of the TRT is provided by the project team in a proof of concept phase. Strategy 1 aligns with Use Case 2 in Interim Technical Report #1. This strategy provides new functional capabilities that will facilitate management of the the- saurus at the facet or domain level; will provide the TRT support team with a range of tools that are currently lacking; and will make it much easier to provide full, partial, or custom extracts and exports from the TRT for TRB community members. This strategy also provides simple and advanced search of the TRT, the ability to expand its scope and coverage without adversely impacting TRID, and the option to implement an expanded categorization scheme to support all modes of transportation. This scenario also gives the TRT management team and the consuming community time to explore options, to work with a full-function thesaurus management tool, and to explore which features and functions are required for future use. Proposed action items are the following: 1. Acquire an ISO 25964 compliant thesaurus management application tool “for convenience.” The selection of such a “convenience copy” supports learning and requirements formaliza- tion and the working copy of the TRT. 2. Prepare a Guiding Principles and Best Practices baseline document to manage and include all current and any changes to policies and practices as TRB works through the future strat- egies for TRT. This action item should also include a renewed discussion of the warrant of the TRT, given a new vision of the future. 3. Configure an ISO 25964 compliant working tool, including (a) define standard relationships; (b) define administrative and note fields, including date created, language base value, unique term identifiers; (c) define local note fields to track Source and Origin for locally contributed terms; (d) define standards-based exports; (e) define term status values; (f ) define term work- flow stages and set values; (g) review standards and advanced search options; (h) configure current TRT Enumeration as an internal categorization scheme; and (i) update the Guiding Principles document to reflect configuration decisions and actions. 4. Transform the current version of the TRT to an ISO-compliant version including the import of all approved and equivalence (non-controlled) terms, creation of formal records with administrative fields for each TRT term, creation of formal BT/NT relationships, the move of the current TRT enumeration codes to a controlled category field, and the integration of pre- viously non-approved terms with “not-approved” status and notes as to reasons for rejection. 5. The indexer interface of TRID will also be linked to the new thesaurus management system through either extraction-transformation-load or interactive web services strategies. The shift in underlying TRT source would be invisible to the indexers. At the TRID system level, a “cut over” date would be defined for switching the behind-the-scenes access from the TRT component in TRID to the new thesaurus management system. Consultation of the TRT by indexers will be targeted to the new thesaurus management system on the “cut over” date. The new system will provide for enhanced access, searching, and discovery of terms for manual indexing. 6. Conduct a quality control review of the new working copy at the facet level. 7. Define and prioritize changes to the working copy of TRT, including all of those defined in Strategy 0, eliminating the RT Hierarchical relationship type, conducting a detailed evalua- tion of BT/NT relationships, and expanding the coverage of synonyms and associative terms. 8. Select two current facets for a proof of concept for implementing changes in the working copy, including a detailed assessment and rebalancing and working with the detail provided in Technical Report 1.

66 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements 9. Define and integrate new category structure and begin filling in vocabularies for new facets, including expansion of modal-specific and cross-modal vocabularies. At the present time, the TRT is modal agnostic. 10. Continue to review and update the remaining facets of the TRT. 11. Develop and test web services integration to TRID, the current TRIS/TRT business rules, including review of fields required for search, review of the impact of expanded synonyms and associative terms on search expansion, and the impact on current and past indexing practices. 12. Release the new automatically generated KWIC, KWOC, term browse, and high-level category browse features. These functions are built into the thesaurus management system as standard predefined reports and functions. 13. Enable TRT search and reporting functions via the web to support external user access and downloads. 14. Review the governance models proposed by the research team and establish a community- wide dialog on (1) shifting governance to the facet level; (2) expanding the involvement of subject matter experts and external stakeholders in the governance process; (3) ensur- ing that governance processes are fully specified and operationalized; (4) ensuring that all supporting guidelines and decision support tools are in place; and (5) establishing strong communication channels to and from stakeholders. This action item would also consider the role of the TRT Subcommittee in the larger governance model. 15. Review the need for additional roles, responsibilities, training, and skills building among the TRT support team and user community including formal roles for project management, managing facets of the TRT, and expanded community engagement. 16. Prepare for formal procurement—defining requirements, reviewing the market, determining the procurement strategy, organizing the procurement committee, including considerations of state and other stakeholder involvement, and identifying funds to support the procurement. Strategy 2—TRT Local and Global Information Discovery Tools Strategy 2 aligns with TRB’s vision to be informative (Figure A-7). Strategy 2 enhances search and discovery in TRID, at the state DOT level, in commercial sources, and in the open web. This strategy improves search and discovery of transportation information by introducing and Figure A-7. Strategy 2—TRT local and global information discovery tools.

TRT Strategic plan 67 enabling smart search capabilities. It sets the stage for multilingual search. This strategy shifts the focus of managing the TRT from individual terms as entities to facet vocabularies. It provides the opportunity to ensure that the TRT is reflecting the language of a transportation domain and all of those who are engaged in that domain. It also enables the TRT users to leverage individual terms as digital entities across sources—with the addition of DOIs for individual terms. This provides a foundation for the National Transportation Library, TRB, and other consumers of the TRT to implement linked data solutions. This strategy also facilitates the inclusion, sharing, and tracing of local transportation terms—variant synonyms as well as unique terms—in the TRT. It also enables TRB and the TRT consumers to recommend the inclusion of more granular terms and terms that reflect the priorities of practitioners across the country (e.g., performance indicators, KPIs, etc.) All of these enhancements to the TRT provide a basis for more intelligent search. This strategy also provides the opportunity to review, configure, and implement multi- lingual search architecture and to begin creating or integrating other language versions of the TRT terms. This strategy presumes the engagement of the broader transportation community. Strategy 2 aligns with Use Case 3 in Interim Technical Report #1. Proposed action items are the following: 1. Review the current functionality and value of the TRID search interface including search and browse structures and the ability of TRID search to leverage the expanded TRT content and functionality. 2. Encourage and enable external use of the TRT including the development of standard and customized exports of the content to support external use throughout the transportation community, encourage local use and feedback, and encourage publishers to use the TRT in their search systems. 3. Develop documentation and an online tutorial for external web service users. 4. Encourage the inclusion of local terms and configure the TRT database to track source and origin of local terms. 5. Develop strategy for multilingual architecture and multilingual search. 6. Expand the external user community around the TRT to support the expansion and improve- ment of transportation search and discovery. 7. Create DOIs for individual TRT terms by leveraging the unique identifiers created in Strategy 1. 8. Reframe governance to include external subject matter experts and the TRT user commu- nity and assign new responsibilities for overseeing and developing facets of transportation. 9. Augment the Guiding Principles and Best Practices document to reflect the new search and discovery functionality and to reflect any changes in coverage. 10. Review the impact of Strategy 2 on TRB TRT competencies, roles, and staffing. 11. Update KPIs as needed. Strategy 3—TRT Automated Classification and Indexing Services Strategy 3 speaks to the resourcefulness element of TRB’s vision (Figure A-8). This strategy focuses on enabling new products and services, grounded in the TRT, and leveraging exist- ing resources more efficiently and effectively. Strategy 3 enhances the new Master Version of the Thesaurus by providing services for Automated Categorization and Indexing across the transportation community. This strategy supports new products and services from TRB and also from the state or local levels. Strategy 3 is best implemented after Strategy 2 has been realized. However, TRB can begin discussions around Strategy 3 while Strategy 2 is in prog- ress. Strategy 3 aligns with Use Case 4 in Interim Technical Report #1. At the end of Strategy 2, TRB is positioned to provide revenue-generating, automated catego- rization, indexing, and abstracting services to members at the state level, to research institutes,

68 The Transportation Research Thesaurus: Capabilities and enhancements to other information providers, and to industry clients. Without Strategy 2, though, the TRT’s content may not be sufficient to provide quality services. This strategy also represents a shift in approach from manual to automated indexing and categorization. It allows TRB to expand both indexing and categorization, compared to the current subject description. This strategy does require new staff competencies and roles. Its impact on information management and discovery in the field of transportation can be significant. It is important, though, for TRB deci- sion makers and the TRT management team to have a strong understanding of the functionality underlying these tools. This strategy will require a new procurement. This strategy also presents opportunities for cooperation and collaboration with states, with the National Transportation Library, with other international transportation partners, and with those in the private sector transportation and transportation-related industries. Action items are the following: 1. Explore and develop models for these potential new services. 2. Gauge the demand for these services and gauge the costs and revenue generation. 3. Assess the role of the National Transportation Library in providing these automated services. 4. Review the TRT’s ability to support these new services by assessing current facets for catego- rization and assessing the terminology for indexing. 5. Develop profiles and rules for new applications, including building the categorization pro- files, building new abstracting rules as required by the abstracting engines, and defining threshold levels for conceptual indexing. 6. Prepare for procurement, and review the market for relevant tools. 7. Develop a proof of concept project working with two state DOTs. 8. Configure and implement the selected tool. 9. Develop a transition plan from manual to automated services. Figure A-8. TRT automated classification and indexing services.

TRT Strategic plan 69 10. Assess KPIs for manual and automated indexing, updating previous KPIs as needed. 11. Review the impact of the use case on TRB competencies, roles, and staffing. Strategy 4—Community-Based Designer Applications from TRT Strategy 4 draws from enhancements made in Use Case Scenarios 2, 3, and 4 and sets the stage for community-based development of new information products and services grounded in the TRT (Figure A-9). This is an impactful strategy, which shifts the value of the TRT from direct to enabling and leverages the TRT as a tool. The expectation is that enhancements and innovations will also be identified for the TRT as a semantic analysis tool. TRB’s role in this strategy is as an enabler. TRB’s responsibilities would be to ensure that custom exports and extracts are available to external developers and to provide the search and browse capabilities that allow external devel- opers to see the TRT content from different perspectives. Governance expands to include one new area—the promotion of Creative Commons agreements that support development but also enable back feeding and sharing across the community. Strategy 4 aligns with Use Case 5 in Interim Technical Report #1. Action items are the following: 1. Update web services and ensure that external users can define and launch custom extracts. 2. Design and implement Creative Commons licensing with full attribution and acknowledge- ment of source and obligations to share back. 3. Create a virtual storefront for sharing custom-built applications. 4. Expand and support an open TRT information focused user community. 5. Ensure that the online tutorial and documentation reflects current strategy. 6. Seed the storefront with existing thesaurus-based, user-developed applications, such as cus- tom transportation dictionaries, mouse-over definitions for transportation terms, web page developers’ link for term lookup, “Did you mean?” disambiguation services, digital thesaurus applications, visual thesaurus displays, and use in business rule repositories, etc. 7. Update KPIs to reflect new functionality delivered by this strategy. 8. Assess the impact of the use case on the competencies, roles, and staffing. Figure A-9. Community-based designer applications from TRT.