Utilization of Radio-Frequency Identification Tags for Transportation Infrastructure Management: Tracking Engineered-to-Order Elements and Materials Throughout Their Life-Cycles

Information flow related to materials and components used in transportation infrastructure systems and their supply chains are plagued with inefficiencies; translating into a variety of problems throughout the life-cycle of these systems. Examples of problems include inadequate or late deliveries to construction sites and components installed at wrong locations at construction sites. High fragmentation in the transportation infrastructure supply-chains further complicates the flow of information. Current manual and labor-intensive methods of tracking components and materials and information associated with them are inefficient resulting in incomplete/inaccurate information or unavailability of information during the life cycle of infrastructure. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tags provide a means to track components from longer distances, store information on the components and enable multiple parties access this information throughout the life-cycle of those components. This paper provides a vision of having intelligent transportation infrastructure components and materials, which know their identities, locations and history, and communicate this information to their environments as a way to address the issues associated with poor tracking and managing of information associated with these components. We specifically propose streamlining information flow through a supply chain by utilizing RFID. To explore the technical feasibility of having intelligent components, a requirements analysis was conducted and based on that, a set of field tests were performed. These experiments demonstrated that it is technically feasible to have intelligent components for transportation infrastructure systems and to automatically collect status information within a supply chain.