RITA | ITS | Benefits: Help

Benefits Database Help

Welcome to the ITS Benefits Database!

This page should assist you in finding what you are looking for, but if you continue to have trouble, please feel free to contact us. Read on for an introduction to the site or click on a link below to look for help more specifically related to what interests you.

Site Navigation

Search Help

ITS Help

Site Navigation

This website offers two types of navigation schemes: Quick Links and Drop-down menus. The Quick Links icons located at the top right hand side allow you to access data in the five ITS decision-making resources:

The navigation "drop down menus" located at the top of the page allow you to browse through the information in the ITS Benefits Database. Each of the drop down menus is described below:

Benefits Database

The Benefits Database menu includes overview information about the Benefits Database.

What's New reveals a list of the 10 most recently posted document summaries in the database sorted by the date of posting.
About This Site describes the data contained in the Benefits Database.
FAQ reveals a list of the most recently posted document summaries in the database sorted by the date of posting.
Available Documents provides a list of downloadable documents related to ITS Benefits and the Benefits Database.
Links provides a list of ITS Evaluation related Web sites.
Contact Us provides contact information for the Benefits Database.
Contribute Data allows the user to share data or documentation to be incorporated in the Benefits Database .
Help presents a link to this Help Page that contains information on how to navigate the Benefits Webpage and how to find information on ITS Benefits.

Browse Benefits By

The Benefits Database includes summaries of various reports documenting the impact of ITS on the surface transportation system. The Browse by Benefits drop down menu provide you with several different ways to browse through these summaries:

Application allows you to access the summaries classified by categories defined by the various application areas of ITS. The taxonomy consists of 14 Intelligent Infrastucture applications and 3 Intelligent Vehicle applications. Each of the 17 applications is further divided. By scanning the sub-application areas, you can choose which benefit summaries may contain information related to your area(s) of interest. These categories are depicted in the taxonomy chart and listed in the Costs Home Page.
Goal Area allows you to view the summaries in the database based on a few good performance measures.
The State and Country links allow you to view reports grouped by the location of the evaluated implementation.
Integration provides access to the benefits summaries sorted by a series of integration links which describe the types of interactions that may occur between various elements of ITS.

Benefit of the Month

Benefit of the Month is an archive of the monthly highlights featured on the Benefits Database. A link to the Benefit of the Month page is also available in the homepage of the USDOT's ITS Joint Program Office.

ITS Knowledge Resources

The ITS Knowledge Resources drop down menu allows you to access the home page for the five ITS knowledge resources websites: Benefits, Costs, Lessons Learned, Application Overview and Deployment Statistics. It also contains a link to the ITS Help Page.

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Search Help

Located at the upper left of each page in this Web site, the search box enables you to quickly access costs, benefits and lessons learned information related to particular interests you may have. An important element of the search capability is the selection field that allows you to search the "benefits" data, "costs" data, "lessons" data, or "all." Selecting "all" allows you to search for benefits, costs, and lessons learned information related to the keywords you enter. Use the "Go" button to submit your search.

In addition to simple word searches, you can use query operators to refine your search.

The following table presents the query operators you can use and describes how each operator will enhance your search.

Operator What it does

and
AND
&
These find documents containing all the conditions or words linked by AND.
Example: 'car AND highway AND safety' finds documents containing all three of these words.

or
OR
, (comma)
These find documents containing either of the conditions or words and returns them ranked by number of appearances in the document.
Example: 'car OR highway OR safety' finds documents containing at least one of these words.
Note ACCRUE works slightly better than OR when sorting results by relevance.

NOT
not
!
These make the query negative.
· You can put NOT between words: 'car AND NOT safety' finds documents containing the word car, but not if they also contain the word safety.
· '(car OR safety) AND NOT (highway OR transit)' finds documents containing the word car or safety, but not if they also contain the word highway or transit.
· '(car AND safety) AND NOT highway' finds documents containing the words car and safety, but not if they also contain the word highway.

" " Placing double quotes around operators (like AND, OR, CONTAINS etc.) allows the search engine to read them as normal words.
Example: "arterial management" finds documents containing the phrase arterial management.

? This is a wildcard. It represents any single letter. It does not work with dates or numbers.
Example: '?ar' finds documents containing car, far, mar, bar (and any other three-letter words that end with 'ar')
'???rt' finds documents containing start, alert, smart, (and any other five-letter words that end with 'rt')

* This is a wildcard. It represents any extension of letters. It does not work with dates or numbers.
Example: 'inter*' finds documents that start with 'inter' such as intersection, interstate, interoperable
Also, '*art*' finds documents containing the letter sequence 'art' such as arterial, cart, start

- (hyphen) This tells the search engine to find the hyphenated word pair. Example: 'full-text' finds documents containing "full-text."

( ) [parentheses] This determines the order in which your query is processed. A part of the query enclosed in parentheses will be processed before parts outside the parentheses.

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ITS Help

Need assistance? Call the ITS Help Line at 866-367-7487 or
e-mail itshelp@volpe.dot.gov

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Operator	What it does
and AND &	These find documents containing all the conditions or words linked by AND. Example: 'car AND highway AND safety' finds documents containing all three of these words.
or OR , (comma)	These find documents containing either of the conditions or words and returns them ranked by number of appearances in the document. Example: 'car OR highway OR safety' finds documents containing at least one of these words. Note ACCRUE works slightly better than OR when sorting results by relevance.
NOT not !	These make the query negative. · You can put NOT between words: 'car AND NOT safety' finds documents containing the word car, but not if they also contain the word safety. · '(car OR safety) AND NOT (highway OR transit)' finds documents containing the word car or safety, but not if they also contain the word highway or transit. · '(car AND safety) AND NOT highway' finds documents containing the words car and safety, but not if they also contain the word highway.
" "	Placing double quotes around operators (like AND, OR, CONTAINS etc.) allows the search engine to read them as normal words. Example: "arterial management" finds documents containing the phrase arterial management.
?	This is a wildcard. It represents any single letter. It does not work with dates or numbers. Example: '?ar' finds documents containing car, far, mar, bar (and any other three-letter words that end with 'ar') '???rt' finds documents containing start, alert, smart, (and any other five-letter words that end with 'rt')
*	This is a wildcard. It represents any extension of letters. It does not work with dates or numbers. Example: 'inter' finds documents that start with 'inter' such as intersection, interstate, interoperable Also, 'art*' finds documents containing the letter sequence 'art' such as arterial, cart, start
- (hyphen)	This tells the search engine to find the hyphenated word pair. Example: 'full-text' finds documents containing "full-text."
( ) [parentheses]	This determines the order in which your query is processed. A part of the query enclosed in parentheses will be processed before parts outside the parentheses.