Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Archaeological Predictive Model Set

A series of seven reports documenting the creation of the Pennsylvania Statewide Archaeological Predictive Model Set. The goal of this project is to develop a set of statewide predictive models to assist the planning of transportation projects. PennDOT is developing tools to streamline individual projects and facilitate Linking Planning and NEPA, a federal initiative requiring that NEPA activities be integrated into the planning phases for transportation projects. The purpose of Linking Planning and NEPA is to enhance the ability of planners to predict project schedules and budgets by providing better environmental and cultural resources data and analyses. To that end, PennDOT is sponsoring research to develop a statewide set of predictive models for archaeological resources to help project planners more accurately estimate the need for archaeological studies. The outcome of this project, contained in seven task-specific reports, documents the development of numerous statistical models created to assess the sensitivity of the landscape for the presence of Native American archaeological sites. The seven task reports of this project are organized as follows: Task 1, background literature review; Task 2, organization of study areas by physiography; Task 3, pilot model study; Task 4, models and results for Regions 1, 2, and 3; Task 5, models and results for Regions 4, 5, and 6; Task 6, models and results for Regions 7, 8, 9, and 10; and Task 7, final project synthesis. Each of Tasks 4, 5, and 6 document the bulk of this undertaking by describing the data preparation, model building process, and results for each of 10 regions that constitute the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Task 7 report synthesizes the methodologies, illuminates the model building process, discusses model validation and findings, and offers possible avenues for future research.This work was funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Transportation under contract 355I01; RFQ 120205. See: https://trid.trb.org/view/136172