Guidance for Developing a Freight Transportation Data Architecture

This report presents the requirements and specifications for a national freight data architecture to link myriad existing data sets, identifies the value and challenges of the potential architecture, and specifies institutional strategies to develop and maintain the architecture. The report is especially valuable for (1) its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of data sources; (2) the development of a national freight data architecture definition that is scalable at the national, state, regional, and local levels; and (3) a better understanding of the challenges that might block the implementation of a national freight data architecture as well as candidate strategies for developing, adopting, and maintaining the data architecture. This report lays the foundation for the development of such a data architecture.