“SMART” TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS THROUGH AUTOMATED DECISION AIDS

A smart computer system developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory can now provide alarm signals when nuclear waste transport drivers waver off course. For wastecarrying trucks bound for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), this is a timely addition to their shipment-tracking systems. As nuclear material and waste shipments have come under increasing public scrutiny, automated decision aids provide an additional layer of procedural and safety assurance. Automated decision aids facilitate intelligent surveillance of areas where normal human monitoring is unsafe, administratively difficult, or economically impractical to meet the challenges of ever increasing interpretation of large amounts of complex data. When applied to transportation systems, these decision aids have the ability to process information from multiple sources and identify and track patterns of activity that are inconsistent with \"normal\" shipment operations. Human operators, drivers, and support personnel can be alerted and provided with recommended courses of action when anomalous events or activities are detected.