Vehicle Miles Trend Assumptions Vary Between Agencies

January 2 – edited to correct Mr. Sundquist’s name.

ORIGINAL POST

Alexis Madrigal highlighted this 2013 post from Eric Sunderland Sundquist at the State Smart Transportation Institute in Madrigal’s Five Interesting Things newsletter.  In it, Sunderland Sundquist discusses how Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) trend projections are compiled by the Department of Transportation and how the assumptions behind those trends have increasingly separated from actual VMT.

A key takeaway is that the overestimates in these trends occur as soon as the year they are released.  For instance, the 2012 estimate released in 2012 (3.3 trillion miles) was found to be 11 percent too high (more than 300 billion miles off).  The 2012 estimate released in 1999 was 22 percent too high.  As these trends inform transportation planning and decision-making for all manner of state, local and federal road projects, overestimates lead to transportation spending that fails to reflect future use.  With the actual VMT trend flattening out over the last several years, to continue to have projections with rates of increase comparable to decades old-projections is completely disconnected from reality.

I thought it worth noting that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has managed to adjust the assumptions in its VMT trend projections to reflect actual data (and continues to do so).  The EIA can be more responsive in part because it is more directly connected to the data used in its projections.  It won’t be enough for the agency to recognize changes in VMT trends; state and local entities involved in traffic data collection and trend projection must also change their assumptions.

Once the 2014 VMT data is available, it will be worth revisiting this topic.

PCAST To Ring In New Year With Old Topic

(January 8 – I’ve linked to the meeting agenda)

The first 2015 meeting of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) takes place on January 9th in Washington, D.C.  Unfortunately, no agenda is presently available, so all we have to go on are the brief items in the Federal Register notice.  (Should an agenda become available before the 9th, I’ll link to it here.)

As usual, you can attend in person (registration is online), and a webcast will be available (it should be available shortly after the meeting).

According to the Federal Register, the public portion of the meeting will cover technology development and the aging population (I presume these are separate panels and separate topics, but I could be wrong).  There will be the opportunity for public comment, and if there are reports in progress, there may be status updates on them as well.

Science and Technology Guests on Late Night, Week of December 29

The holiday repeats continue.  The only one of note is Dr. John Holdren’s recent appearance with David Letterman will run again on Friday night.  The MythBusters megamarathon also continues, and will end on Friday.  The new season of the show will premiere in the U.S. on January 10.

I’m still catching up with the Comedy Central programs (pre-empted again this week).  A segment of note was in the December 4th program, when new correspondent Trevor Noah presented a segment on, among other things, Ebola.

While I don’t expect to see any science and technology content in them, Comedy Central has made the first four episodes of The Colbert Report (October 17-20, 2005) available in full on its website.  I don’t know how long they’ll remain, but I’d try to watch them by the January 19 premiere of The Nightly Show.

Disasters.data.gov – Not A Satire Site

Disasters.data.gov was launched in mid-December (H/T Executivegov.com).  The site is intended to serve as a repository of open data sets related to disasters (which can include severe winter weather along with the usual suspects).  There are several tools designed for emergency preparedness linked to at the site, and

There are two ways in which people can help build out the site:

Innovator Challenge – The site is looking for short descriptions of answers to this question: ‘How might we leverage real-time sensors, open data, social media, and other tools to help reduce the number of fatalities from flooding?’

Call To Action – The site wants to host open data sets for information that has, traditionally, not been made available to the public.  Most of the data sets currently on the site are federal in origin, so there is a bigger need for information at a more local scale.  This could include evacuation routes, information on what businesses remain open during disasters, or other disaster-related data.

If you are involved in disaster preparedness and response (and aren’t already familiar with the site), there are other ways you can get involved.

An Undersea Challenge Awaits

Earlier this month the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the Nutrient Sensor Challenge.  A collaboration between the Alliance for Coastal Technologies, and federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration, the challenge is focused on helping better understand where aquatic nutrients come from and how they move in waterways.

The requirements for meeting the challenge are sensors that meet the following criteria:

• are accurate over concentration ranges commonly observed,
• are easy to use in maintenance-free, autonomous,  remote deployments of three months,
• cost less than $5,000 to purchase, and
• can be commercially available by 2017.

Those interested in participating must register by March 16, 2015.

More Counting Challenges – This Time On Degrees

Over the last few years, national statistics collections have come under fire, at least on the surface, over concerns about personal privacy (the survey is mandatory).  It’s an issue that can be controlled for, through anonymization of data, aggregation of records, and/or sitting on public release of the data for decades.

Yet the efforts persist.  AAAS has issued a call to the U.S. Census Bureau to not remove a question from the American Community Survey, an annual survey conducted by the Bureau to track demographic changes.  The Bureau is currently reviewing the survey for possible revisions, taking comments through December 30.

The question prompting AAAS to comment is number 12:

“Undergraduate Field of Degree—This question focuses on this person’s Bachelor’s Degree. Please print below the specific major(s) of any Bachelor’s Degrees this person has received.”

Per the Federal Register notice, the Bureau’s analysis concluded that this question was Low Cost/Low Value.

As you might expect, AAAS challenged the Low Value characterization of the question, noting that the undergraduate major matters to assessments of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields and STEM disciplines.  Not having this resource available for analysis will shift the cost of collecting this information to parties that perhaps aren’t as well equipped as the Census Bureau.  As AAAS writes in its letter:

“In addition, this Question is a critical component to other congressionally mandated surveys and is a cost efficient way to gather important data that multiple stakeholders can utilize, including the federal government.  For example, Question 12 is a key data point in the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG).   The Census Bureau should carefully weigh the added costs to other government surveys that will be impacted by its elimination.”

If you’d like to chime in, on question 12 or any other, you have until December 30.

Maybe Now There Is A Science Awards Season?

I mused about this in late 2013 – an official awards season for science awards that echoes the one for movies.  Since that post one award has been introduced with a television-friendly awards ceremony.  The Breakthrough Prizes had their second ceremony broadcast on The Science Channel in November.  If it remains in that spot for future years (the first televised ceremony was in January 2014), we might have something.

This season would run from September through November, starting with the Ig Nobels and Golden Goose Awards, followed by the Nobels, and ending with the Breakthrough Prize announcements (hopefully with the ceremony).  Should the National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology and Innovation be announced and/or awarded during this time, so much the better.

What would make such a season an effective tool in promoting scientific and technical accomplishment is a persistent publicity campaign.  The Breakthrough ceremony benefits in part due to the celebrity factor.  But the Golden Goose Awards are Washington D.C.-focused, the Ig Nobels and their serious cousins are little known outside the scientific community.  Should there be interest in expanding the brand, as it were, broader promotion of these awards could help.

Culture Corner Update – MythBusters MegaMarathon, Rap Guide To Religion Extended

First,  managed to miss a repeat of note for this week’s science and technology guest post.  Eddie Redmayne, who plays Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, was back on with Seth Meyers Monday night.

Also connected to Monday’s science and technology post is the current MythBusters marathon on The Science Channel.  It started early this morning and will run for nearly 10 days.  That’s right, if you’ve ever missed an episode of MythBusters the next week and a half will allow you to catch up (at least until Hulu picks up the show for streaming next month).

Finally, the run of The Rap Guide to Religion has been extended – again.  It starts back at The Soho Playhouse for several dates in January and February.  By the time this extension ends, Baba Brinkman’s latest off-Brodway run will last over four months.  As with his previous works, this Rap Guide is a scientific exploration of the phenomenon of religion.

Merry Christmas (Eve), everyone.

Maybe Something Good Comes Out Of The Recent Ebola Epidemic

As Jon Stewart recently noted, the Ebola epidemic must be over because no more Americans have caught it.  (Yes, that’s a joke.)  However, there are still thousands of cases to be treated in Africa, and viable vaccines are just now entering clinical trials.

One other area of disease treatment has seen some progress.  A team out of Johns Hopkins has developed a new protective suit, and was recently awarded a grant to further improve it.  The hood provides more visibility, and the suit should be easier to get into and out of.  Here’s a demonstration video.

I would expect that this suit should be usable for other highly contagious disease situations.  I’m looking forward to seeing this widely deployed and eventually used in future science fiction and/or outbreak movies.

Science and Technology Guests on Late Night, Week of December 22

With Christmas coming fast, many shows are off now, and all of them will air repeats (or be pre-empted) for at least part of this week and next.

However, looking at both the repeats and the new episodes this week, I’m at a loss for any guest that would fit this bill.  I’m hard press to think of the last time this happened, so it’s likely been a while.

Given last week’s departures, some schedule changes of note.  Comedy Central is pre-empting its programs this week and next.  Come January 5th, we’ll have the temporally confusing situation where @midnight will air at 11:30 for two weeks, returning to midnight on the 19th.  That is the evening The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore will start.  The Colbert Report should still be available online for the near future (the first four episodes have been online for a while).  I hope Comedy Central keeps the videos online for a while, or that they find a home somewhere.  That’s a library of material that shouldn’t disappear into the ether.

The Late Late Show is in repeats until January 5th with recently departed host Craig Ferguson.  There will be a series of guest hosts until March 23rd, when James Corden takes over.  If the first two weeks announced guests are any indication, the program will become more ordinary, and with much fewer science and technology bookings.

The light in this tunnel is MythBusters, scheduled to return in January for its first batch of episodes with just Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage hosting the program.  This appears to mean more building and construction leading to the experiments and explosions we have come to know and love.