{"id":103572,"date":"2019-02-06T14:40:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T22:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcuser&p=103572"},"modified":"2024-07-25T16:24:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T23:24:15","slug":"maximizing-the-freight-economy","status":"publish","type":"arcuser","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcuser\/maximizing-the-freight-economy","title":{"rendered":"Maximizing the Freight Economy"},"author":1432,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"arcuser_issues":[80392],"class_list":["post-103572","arcuser","type-arcuser","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","arcuser_issues-summer-2016"],"acf":{"short_description":"Oberstar, who served for four years as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, asserted that greater public-sector\u2026","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":103582,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

An ArcGIS-enabled resource broadens understanding of business's \"last dark continent.\"<\/h3>\r\nIn the spring of 2012, Thomas Horan, dean of the Drucker-Ito School of Management at California's Claremont Graduate University (CGU), found himself at dinner with the late James Oberstar, a former United States Representative for Minnesota, and Matt Rose, then CEO of the railroad giant BNSF Railway Company. Something of a debate took shape.<\/em>\r\n\r\nOberstar, who served for four years as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, asserted that greater public-sector investment in the United States' freight-rail infrastructure was needed and that such support deserved to be recognized as an essential economic driver. Rose countered that\u00a0private-sector<\/em>\u00a0investment in moving goods and services by rail was more critical to economic progress.\r\n\r\n\"It was a\u00a0My Dinner with Andre<\/em>\u00a0experience,\" Horan said, referring to the film in which a simple over-dinner conversation results in unexpectedly broadened world views for those at the table. In weighing Oberstar's argument for public-sector freight-rail support against Rose's advocacy for private investment, Horan\u2014a public-policy specialist whose work has influenced health care legislation as well as transportation policy\u2014arrived at an epiphany that came in the form of a third point of view: \"They were\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0right.\"\r\n\r\nAs the conversation progressed, the three agreed that an easily accessed information source\u2014one tailored to an audience that could include legislators, business leaders, and freight analysts\u2014was needed to foster a greater understanding of the United States' freight infrastructure, its effect on the economy, and the value of both public and private investment in freight-rail capacity. Such a tool, they theorized, could also improve private-sector comprehension of the potential of freight rail and create opportunities to improve the freight-rail infrastructure by identifying efficiencies and weaknesses in the movement of goods."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":103592,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"That moment of inspiration has led to the\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>, an ArcGIS-powered online resource developed by a partnership that includes Claremont Graduate University, Esri, and the University of Minnesota, with financial backing from BNSF Railway and the State of Minnesota. With a menu of interactive maps, the atlas illustrates relationships between commodity sources and the United States' freight infrastructure and offers tools to gain an improved grasp of concepts like industry clusters\u2014sets of interconnected stakeholders within a geographic area\u2014and location quotients, economic ratios comparing regional attributes to those of the country as a whole.\r\n\r\n\"There's been attention to the technical and logistic aspects of supply chain\u2014how to get things from here to there, how to optimize\u00a0[routing]<\/em>\u2014all of which is important,\" Horan said. \"There hasn't been a broad understanding of the spatial aspects of supply chain, and the\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>\u00a0has allowed us to\u00a0[offer]<\/em>\u00a0that in ways easily understood. Our target audiences are the decision makers handling not only those technical aspects but also the policy, organizational, and corporate aspects\u2014maximizing value, making it all happen, and working with various companies throughout a supply chain to deliver\u00a0[a]<\/em>\u00a0quality enterprise.\"\r\n\r\nPrior to his work with the\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>, Horan had already earned a reputation for creating innovative platforms with which to share critical data with the public. In 2008, he codeveloped, with CGU professor Brian Hilton, the website\u00a0Safe Road Maps, which presents mapped data\u2014state by state and even street by street\u2014on traffic fatalities and auto accidents.\u00a0[See \"Mapping Roadway Fatalities\u2014Website increases awareness and understanding<\/a>\" in the summer 2012 issue of<\/em>\u00a0ArcUser.]<\/em>\u00a0By simply zooming in on a particular geographic location, site visitors can call up historical information on accidents that have occurred along a particular route, allowing them to gauge travel risks. Demand for such information was so strong, Horan said, that on the site's launch date, several additional servers had to be brought online to handle the unexpected user volume. To date, he estimates, the site has earned more than 15 million hits."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":103602,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\"We took this data\u2014which had existed in a data warehouse but had not been mapped\u2014and enabled understanding by the public,\" Horan said. \"When you can do that, those are great moments. It's inspiring to see a situation and realize GIS and spatial analysis will represent a breakthrough moment.\"\r\n\r\nIn the challenge that emerged from his conversation with Oberstar and Rose, Horan recognized a similar opportunity to foster awareness\u2014in this case, of the economic value of freight\u2014by again using GIS to deliver data in a fashion meaningful to a mainstream audience. He envisioned an approach modeled after the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, an online resource offering geospatial data on medical procedures, health care access, and costs.\r\n\r\n\"Dartmouth's health atlas has had a huge impact on health care policy over the last 20 years, charting spatial disparities,\" Horan said. \"If they could do that, we could do that for supply chain.\"\r\n\r\nWork on the\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>, began within a GIS practicum course\u2014in which students develop GIS-based solutions for real-world challenges\u2014at Claremont's Center for Information Systems and Technology (CISAT), then moved to the Advanced GIS Lab at CISAT, headed by Professor Hilton.\r\n\r\nUsing data from the Bureau of Economic Affairs, the Freight Analysis Framework (produced through a partnership between the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and Federal Highway Administration), and the 2012 United States Census Commodity Flows Survey, the atlas identifies major industry clusters within a state and uses location quotients to provide measurements of a state's industrial specializations. That data is depicted in relation to local freight-intensive routes that lead to major freight-rail corridors."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":103612,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\"We use ArcGIS for Desktop to create the basic maps,\" Hilton explained. \"We then publish them online as map services using ArcGIS for Server. We use ArcGIS Online to organize and manage them, and then publish them as story maps using various templates.\"\r\n\r\nThe resultant analytical picture, Hilton said, provides a \"specialized understanding of commodity movements within and between regions.\" Using United States Department of Transportation data, the atlas goes further, identifying the proportion of a region's production associated with freight movement and helping create a picture of the economic impact of that freight traffic.\r\n\r\n\"[A region's]<\/em>\u00a0trading clusters can really leverage economic growth,\" Horan said. \"Two-thirds of the economic growth in this country\u00a0[can be attributed to]<\/em>\u00a0trading clusters. With the\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>, we're taking on some of those clusters and showing local communities that the business around the corner\u2014because it's part of a trading cluster\u2014is really important, as is the supply chain around it.\"\r\n\r\nHoran points to an example: Due to the demand in China for commodities, Minnesota's grain industry has outpaced urban-based industries in the economic rebound. \"Farms in Minnesota are doing great because China buys their soybeans,\" he said. \"A community getting new jobs in rural Minnesota is getting those jobs because of grain being delivered by BNSF. We're able to show, through maps and analysis, that\u00a0[this industry cluster]<\/em>\u00a0is important.\"\r\n\r\nHoran expects the atlas to help mainstream users achieve a greater awareness of supply chain concepts. Such a need is especially apparent, he explained, among policy makers and legislators."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":103622,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\"I've worked on transportation policy on Capitol Hill,\" Horan said. \"There isn't a good understanding of the spatial dimensions of supply chain\u2014across states, across the country\u2014or how policy affects economic value. Through these story maps and cluster analyses\u00a0[published on the<\/em>National Freight Economy Atlas]<\/em>, we give a sense of understandability to the idea of supply chain.\"\r\n\r\nEarly response to\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>, he adds, has been especially strong among state-level policy makers and administrators responsible for investments in and long-term planning for rail infrastructure, as the atlas has provided a tool with which to observe and quantify both the demand and the untapped potential for freight rail services. Horan contends the site also gives weight to arguments for public-private partnerships that can enable trading clusters and supply chains, \"or at least not thwart them.\"\r\n\r\nNext, Horan hopes to expand thr\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>'s scope to include data and analysis of other transportation modes, beginning with air freight. He and his\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>\u00a0collaborators have been working with Federal Express on strategies to illustrate the value of the air-freight infrastructure in moving high-value, low-weight products.\r\n\r\nAs vital as GIS has proved in the development and presentation of\u00a0National Freight Economy Atlas<\/em>\u00a0and as a platform for the wider analysis of supply chain, Horan and Hilton agree that its full potential is still unrealized.\r\n\r\n\"GIS has impacted the supply chain and logistics field, though it seems more at the descriptive levels of analysis and decision-making: what happened, and why did it happen?\" Hilton said. \"Where I see it making an impact in the future is in the predictive and prescriptive levels\u2014what is going to happen, and what should we do about it?\"\r\n\r\nGiven the fundamental nature of supply chain and logistics\u2014fields devoted to moving goods over distances\u2014Horan foresees moving past a stage at which GIS fuels operational research and into an environment in which the tools of geospatial analysis are ubiquitous across the shipping industry. GIS, he contends, has the potential to conquer what the renowned management theorist Peter Drucker\u2014the \"Drucker\" in Claremont's Drucker-Ito School\u2014regarded as one of the business world's greatest challenges: attaining a full comprehension of the science of moving goods.\r\n\r\n\"Drucker called logistics the 'last dark continent,'\" Horan said. \"It was a black hole. But through GIS and the visualization it offers, we can deliver an everyday understanding to companies and governments of the importance of supply chain. That's not just an operational issue, but really a value issue for companies and the communities in which they operate.\""},{"acf_fc_layout":"pdf","file":103632}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nMaximizing the Freight Economy Maximizing the Freight Economy | Fall 2016 | ArcUser<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Oberstar, who served for four years as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, asserted that greater public-sector\u2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcuser\/maximizing-the-freight-economy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Maximizing the Freight Economy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Oberstar, who served for four years as chairman of the 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