Session Moderators

Moderator(s): 
Rachel Castignoli, Senior Consultant, City of Austin, Texas 

Julia Friedlander, Senior Manager – Automated Driving Policy, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

Session Organizers

Organizers:
Rachel Castignoli - Senior Consultant, City of Austin

TRB Sponsoring Committees and Partners

Session Description and Agenda

Description

As AV deployments increase stakeholders will increasingly rely on data to inform policy decisions and fit autonomous vehicles into overall mobility plans. What data is being gathered and used by cities currently? What data do AV developers want to increase the safety of their deployments? And finally how can we use the data to gauge AV safety and identify places where AVs can support transportation choice?

Agenda

Introduction (5 minutes) - Julia Friedlander

Brief overview of the session objectives and agenda.
Importance of data-informed decision making in AV deployments. How do we know if AVs are doing a good job? Are they being safe and are they fulfilling a mobility need? How do we know if they are struggling with a specific driving scenario or intersection? How can we predict how they will react to emergency situations?

II. Current Data Utilization (20 minutes)

Presentation by City of Austin & NHTSA representatives:

Overview of AV dashboards currently in place.
Creation, process, and usage of dashboards.
Examples of data usage in improving safety and infrastructure.
Limitations and challenges in current data collection.

III. AV Data about the Built Environment and Riders (20 minutes)

Presentation by Volkswagen (Alison Pascale) & AZ Commerce (Jeff Wishart):

Data collected by AVs about infrastructure.
Insights from pickup and drop-off data on transportation needs.
Observations on driver behavior.
Data required by AV companies for safe deployment.

IV. Identifying Data Gaps & Future Directions (20 minutes)

Presentation by MITRE (Alex Rudin) & Retrospect (Michael Woon):

Discussion on missing data crucial for AV deployment.
Determining areas where AVs could fulfill specific needs.
Framework for demonstrating safety in the development process.
Importance of scenario-based testing and software updates.

V. Open Discussion and Q&A (25 minutes)

Interactive session for audience questions and discussions with panelists.
Moderator facilitates the exchange of ideas and insights.

Session Objectives

The objectives of this panel are:

To identify what data is currently being collected by entities (cities, the federal DOT, AV companies) and how it is used to improve performance.

What data could be exchanged between these entities to provide a clearer picture of AV deployments and help inform decision-making amongst these parties.

What data would be useful, helpful, how it could be collected, how it could be analyzed, managed, stored.