The name is a bit of a misnomer because this database-driven system is actually one massive information management system. TRIMS, the Tennessee Roadway Information Management System, has massive amounts of data and features and many levels of functionality.
TRIMS is very much the data-heavy GIS Tom Eldridge envisioned over five years ago when technological transformation of TDOTs information management system was approved. As TDOTs TRIMS project manager, Eldridge has overseen the fattening up of a once standalone mainframe TRIMS database, which held only tables of road-related data.
It is now a comprehensive, integrated, distributed database system that brings a visual and spatial element to nearly every piece of digital data held by TDOT.
With the TRIMS of today, personnel can make layered maps in minutes, automate reporting tasks, take a virtual drive through a section of any highway or interstate, create inventories of roads and roadside features, correlate and analyze data through detailed queries, monitor pavement conditions, and study road surfaces, paths and driving speeds to ensure road safety.
"[TRIMS has] changed the way the Department of Transportation does business," Eldridge said.
TDOT is charged with monitoring about 87,000 miles of public roads, state highways and interstates and more than 20,000 bridges throughout Tennessee. Information such as what city the road lies in, how long it is, how wide it is, what type of surface it has and how wide the shoulder is has been recorded in a database for each road. Personnel also gather data on traffic flow, bridge conditions and accident locations.
TRIMS was first developed in 1973. Although it was state of the art at the time, it became increasingly problematic to use. As the database contained only tabular data, it was impossible for employees to produce maps within the system. Because TRIMS was housed and controlled in one department, access to the system was limited and data had to be printed out, making it difficult to share. The amount of information that could be obtained from the database was limited to a fixed set of queries. TRIMS was also costly to update, it wasnt GIS compatible and it didnt lend itself to expansion. By the early 1990s, it had become a dinosaur.
TRIMS Takes a U-Turn
And so began TDOTs endeavor to create a state-of-the-art information management system yet again. In early 1997, TRIMS was moved to an enterprise-wide client/server environment and a LAN was developed to allow staff to access and share data from their own desktops. Huntsville, Ala.-based Intergraph Corporations Government Solutions division helped redesign the database, transitioning it from an IMS mainframe database to an Oracle Windows NT database, and provided a services and technology application complete with the Modular GIS Environment and GeoMedia software tools.
Additionally, the interfaces to collect and view the data were rewritten, displacing the fixed format screens with dynamic windows, allowing ad hoc reports to be created instantly with up-to-date, realtime data.
Today, the TRIMS system has grown from a user base of 20 to 700 statewide, allowing staff in remote offices to instantly access and retrieve TRIMS data. Users can peruse tabular roadway data such as ownership of road segments, right-of-way (ROW) widths, speed limits, average daily traffic (ADT) statistics, accident dates and locations, road curve and grade and elevation information. And any and all data held in tables can be instantly queried and integrated to create maps, reports and inventories.
In addition, users have access to an online, high-resolution digital photolog system, bringing a visual element to the TRIMS database of numbers. Twenty-five years ago, a photolog was created using 35mm film and a van-mounted camera. About three years ago the photolog was integrated into TRIMS, and since then, the system was upgraded with high-resolution photologs offering nearly 3 million images of Tennessee roadways, each stored as a 165KB JPEG file and indexed to all data in TRIMS.
Its all part of TDOTs original plan to replace the outdated paper printouts of maps, drawings, reports and statistics from the TRIMS dinosaur era with highly accurate GPS-based road measurements, higher quality digital photographs and highly interactive and intuitive searching and mapping functionality. Most importantly, said Eldridge, todays TRIMS is a successful product of sophisticated software and data integration.
"We wanted TRIMS to become the one source that department personnel refer to for planning, research or verification of any segment of road in the state," said Eldridge. "And within TRIMS, we wanted people to be able to access and view any piece of data in any way suitable to them, be it from tabular data to a map, from a map to a photo or a photo to tabular data. That data can then be exported to a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation. Its all integrated."
A Driving Force to Efficiency
Applying TRIMS data has indeed become a daily ritual for many TDOT employees, particularly those in the planning, traffic, safety, engineering and maintenance areas.
With the support of TRIMS, tracking inventories for maintenance personnel has gone from an exercise in poring over stacks of booklets and files to an exercise in keystrokes. Since the systems redesign, maintenance employees have been creating a host of road-related inventories for the state-maintained highways such as guardrails, signposts, wildflower plots along roads and sections of extra paint striping for no-pass zones.
Each time an inventory is done, the data is inserted into TRIMS, automatically updating the relevant data fields in the system. That allows managers to better design and manage work details for field crews. Most importantly, said Eldridge, they can use that data to calculate the number of vehicles, employees, supplies and money needed to maintain these road-related features, resulting in better budgeting.
GPS data provides important road characteristics to planners to help them determine improvement projects. TDOT began acquiring GPS road track data in 1986, which helped augment the accuracy of the road features such as mile points, position and location of bridges. With the new TRIMS, algorithms were applied to the GPS data to display the length and elevation of curves and grades.
Although the accuracy isnt good enough to construct roads, it allows planners to identify curves or grades that are too steep or sharp for the designated speed limit. Projects can then be scheduled to improve driver safety.
Visualization features offered through the systems photolog bring improved investigative tools to users in the traffic and safety areas.
Using a customized viewer, personnel can use the photolog to support studies on accident locations. If a certain area has registered a high number of accidents, users can request a photo of that exact location to visually understand what features are present.
Users can then "drive" along the road - continuous still shots appear as users move through the area - to study the pavement conditions and any structures that may impair a drivers view of oncoming traffic. As they drive they can perform U-turns to analyze the view from the opposite direction or they can request the viewer to stop at intersections, allowing them to study the approaches to the intersection from different directions or to turn and drive down another road.
In addition, as users move across photologs, attributes relevant to the road section appear on the screen. Users select the attributes they want to see, which include mile point, route number, ROW width, ADT statistics, pavement conditions or last project done on the road.
"The photolog system will display any selectable attribute users choose and they can request the system to draw the location and attributes on a map," said Eldridge. "Its probably the most-used feature of TRIMS."
Increasing personnels comfort zones with mapping has been one of the most useful benefits of TRIMS, according to Eldridge. The integrated features of todays TRIMS is driving users to look at maps as a standard information tool. Users can either begin queries or searches from a map of Tennessee, zooming in to find their area of interest, or they can request the system to draw a map from tabular data or a photo.
As they move across a map, attributes relevant to the road will be displayed. Clicking on any feature of the road will take them to a photo or a table containing information about that feature.
Although the photolog system is the most used function, Eldridge said the most significant benefit of TRIMS is a feature called dynamic segmentation. Dynamic segmentation enables staff to link corresponding data from multiple tables on the fly. For example, users can tag beginning and end points on a certain road and query the system to identify sections where the ROW width is more than 300 feet and ADT statistics are over 10,000.
Normally, with traditional database tools, that query would prompt the software to return all records relevant to the attributes selected, and users would have to manually search the records and link the query results together. Dynamic segmentation searches multiple data tables, finds data that match the query criteria, returns only those sections that apply to the specified query and automatically resegments them into a single data record.
"Now we can query the system to find, correlate and retrieve on the fly a range of attribute data for any given section of roadway in the state," said Eldridge. "Based on one query, I can have the system color a certain piece of road, find ADTs of a certain number, indicate the year of the ADT count and reveal what percentage of that traffic is from trucks. Thats a powerful analysis tool."
A powerful tool is indeed what TRIMS has provided Department of Transportation employees, said Mike Shinn, TDOTs chief administrative officer. "The greatest benefit of TRIMS is we now have timely access to our mission-critical information. By improving access to data, we are able to make better and more timely decisions."
The Road To The Future
Given the acceptance of TRIMS across TDOT, Eldridge has been busy making plans for further system growth. One clear benefit would be to get TRIMS into the hands of field crews, a development Eldridge is presently testing.
Additionally, hed like to develop a routing application for truck and delivery drivers. He envisions a time when drivers will be able to stop at a welcome station and access the TRIMS system from a kiosk to plot routes for themselves based on construction zones, narrow roads, low bridges or weight-restricted bridges.
In the meantime, employees are focused on watching TRIMS size. Although there is little concern that TRIMS will become too full of data, the application potential of the system pushes personnel to create more functionality, said Eldridge, and that can make it harder for the average user to use the GIS. TRIMS will still remain a massive GIS, but Eldridge plans to streamline TRIMS to slim and simplify the most-used features of the system.
Mary Jo Wagner maryjo@attcanada.ca is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, Canada.
