Location: Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies, Irvine, California

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The 2009 North American Freight Flows Conference will bring together government and industry managers, analysts, and data specialists concerned with North American cross-border freight flows. They will discuss challenges and identify new ideas concerning the availability and application of data for program evaluation, policy formation, and business decision making.

Building on progress made in two previous conferences, the objective of the 2009 conference is to identify improvements in the availability and use of cross-border freight transportation data and to identify areas that require further research. The planning team seeks proposals for presentations describing past and current experiences in

• North American Data Partnerships: Progress and potential for North American data partnerships in collecting and sharing freight transportation data, including both public–public and public–private collaborations;

• Innovative uses of data: Recent applications of North American freight flow data including analysis and modeling of to support public or private sector planning and management decision making at the national, local and state levels;

• Plans for improving data availability: Efforts by public or private sectors to improve the quality and availability of North American freight data;

• Better data and analytics to support freight transportation investment decisions: Experiences demonstrating the need for improved data and methods to sharpen pre-investment intelligence, including the ability to predict potential economic and environmental impacts.

Participants will hear reports from recently completed and in-progress research projects sponsored by the National Cooperative Freight Research Program, including the Freight Data Architecture Project, and by U.S. Department of Transportation agencies and their counterparts in Canada and Mexico. The results of the conference will help guide future North American freight data research.