Task 1: Literature Review
A comprehensive literature review was conducted in order to gather all available information on published work related to ABC practices and implementation. Literature was gathered and organized by topic and date. Summaries of each of the project details and significant findings were created for use in the interactive database. The literature search is ongoing.
Task 2: State DOT Survey
A research submission page is being developed so that information can be more easily entered into the database. Once developed, this submission page will be used to gain a better understanding of ongoing work.
Task 3: Database Assembly
The work of this project is closely related to that of the ABC solutions database project. For this reason, one database containing several data tables is being created to host all the research and project data that has been gathered by the researchers. The focus of the last few months has been on the design and development of this online database. The layout and navigation of the research database will closely mirror that of the project database, as shown in Figure 1. The developed mock-ups are being used to create a functioning database to be hosted by the ABC UTC website.
Figure 1: Initial mock-ups for database search interface
An additional server was obtained and formatted to host all the data for the database and all database related activity. The server and the database interface are still being developed.
Task 4: Database Maintenance
The other concern for the project was the issue of database maintenance (i.e. methods to keep the database up to date with all of the latest projects). In order to address this, a user-form will be created in which users of the site can upload their research information into the database (after proper verification of the data is completed). The initial mock-ups, shown in Figure 2, and outline of this system have been developed, but this system is yet to be coded.
Figure 2: Research submission page mock-ups