Presentation topic area: Education

Transportation engineering has evolved into a broad multidisciplinary field during the last few decades. This multidisciplinary nature of the profession has become more profound and visible since the advent of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) early last decade. The remarkable advances in computers, communications, electronics, control, and other related technologies have found important applications in the transportation system. Universities are expected to fulfill their mission by meeting the growing and changing needs of the transportation profession. As far as the ITS is concerned, this requires building new skills and cross-cutting competencies in engineers beyond the traditional knowledge and skills being offered in the transportation discipline for decades now. Means towards that end may include transportation program curricula changes/revisions, offering ITS-related multidisciplinary courses, building new capacities into transportation labs to support some of the important ITS applications, and conducting field trips to ITS projects as part of course requirements or student organization activities. This paper presents the development of an on-line wireless traffic monitoring system as part o