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February 19, 2010

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IN DEPTH: TECHNOLOGY

Taking a Systems Approach to Technology Deployment
BY ANNE O’NEIL, P.E., CSEP, Chief Systems Engineer, MTA New York City Transit, New York, NY

Increasing numbers of North American public transit agencies are exploring the application of systems engineering. Systems engineering provides the means to create a successful design and deployment of complex systems. It also offers tools to manage the risks arising from increased use and integration of technologies.

These agencies are joining their international counterparts that report benefits from pursuing this holistic, interdisciplinary approach. What are the reasons for this growing trend?

Current demand for technology solutions. Customers want real-time information to guide their decision making regarding transportation options. Commuters want to know when the next bus or train will arrive, while tourists will inquire about the quickest route to their destination from their current location. This requires access to real-time service information that provides information on both planned service disruptions and unexpected incidents.

Passengers considering routes that require transfer between transportation modes expect their transfer to be operationally coordinated—so minimal transfer time delays their connection, even if crossing between two separate operational providers. Customers also want to stay connected on their computers and phones, so they may opt for transportation modes that accommodate this connectivity, even if the trip is slightly longer or costs slightly more, because they can be more productive during their travel time.

Given the economic climate, transit agencies need to stretch the funding they do receive. Yet with the additional desired and required functionality outlined above, staff must operate more efficiently as transit networks expand and add services. Efficiencies must be found, as staffing levels are not typically increased.

In a post-9/11 environment, the call for increased security and surveillance has affected operational practices and necessitated an increase in electronic surveillance and monitoring systems. Numerous factors have created a set of demands that can only be met with the deployment of technology-based solutions.

Technology is transforming public transit. Public transit agencies historically operate as a collective of “functional silos” or functionally autonomous groups. For example, transit operations staff, including dispatchers and bus/train operators, have access to real-time information regarding service disruptions and incidents, as they perform and directly oversee the operation. Meanwhile, station-based staff, serving as the direct customer interface, may not have access to this information, despite passengers looking to them for precisely this information.

To adequately serve our customers’ expectations, these functional groups must share information among themselves.

For agencies seeking to address operating efficiencies, the ability to remotely monitor equipment performance and obtain diagnostic data allows maintenance staff to effectively troubleshoot and triage issues from the office without having to travel to multiple field locations simply to assess each situation. More often the first field visit can resolve the problem. In addition, accessing this performance data may allow for proactive maintenance before a failure occurs—all helping prevent excessive service delays or disruptions.

Reports of recent airport screening failures demonstrate how the lack of information sharing across functional separate jurisdictions can be exploited to cause significant disruption or worse.

Incorporating technology has the potential to affect public transit in very positive ways, providing operational efficiencies and value to our customers. But it also poses change for us, sometimes altering our operational procedures or requiring modifications to long-standing divisions of work and information ownership.

While technology helps solve challenges, it creates others. Today’s transit system expansions and capital projects consist of much more complexity than tunnel boring machines and soil complications. These projects deploy integrated systems that are software-intensive, highly dependent on communication networks, and full of interfaces. (Interfaces occur where interactions happen between separate elements, e.g., mechanical equipment and communications equipment, or hardware and software, or human operators and equipment.)

In addition, these interfaces typically cross traditional technical discipline boundaries, e.g., electrical, mechanical, and communications engineering, and traditional maintenance and operating group boundaries, e.g., electricians, electronics, and telecommunication maintainers. Suddenly the civil work is no longer the primary challenge.

Questions arise such as: Can our legacy systems interface with the technology currently available? What prerequisite knowledge must our maintenance staff obtain to be eligible for training and performing the maintenance on this new equipment? How do we know all our systems will be successfully integrated at the end of the contract?

These challenges faced by the transit industry are indications of a technology transformation underway.

Systems Engineering Can Help with Challenges
When other industries faced comparable technology transformation, they turned to a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to understand and manage these highly integrated systems across their full life cycle (“cradle to grave”). For example, the aviation industry and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have relied on a systems engineering approach for decades to address the growth of complexity and technology of the integrated systems that make passenger air travel possible.

Given that both FAA and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) are part of DOT, it should not be surprising that FTA has begun looking at systems engineering as well.

Systems engineering focuses on understanding the complete operational problem to be solved. It identifies the operational needs as early as possible and has a structured set of activities to incrementally ensure these needs are met from development through delivery and operational phases. It also provides interdisciplinary principles and practices that promote successful systems.

The process promotes dialogue and exchange of information between functional groups, between operations and engineering, which has now become essential given the arrival of technology solutions. It is time to tailor this approach and apply systems engineering to public transportation projects.

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