State Transportation Innovation Councils (STIC)

To showcase innovations in Michigan, MI-STIC has officially launched its external facing innovation dashboard to highlight areas of research, new products, innovative contracts, digital data, and traffic flow and mobility advancements.

The  MDOT Innovations  dashboard allows users to browse innovations by category, perform a search, or explore an interactive map of the state to select innovations by location. Innovation details include the year of implementation, an extended description, a summary of the benefits, and any external links if available for more information.

The dashboard is posted for public access on the  MDOT  homepage and on the MDOT STIC website. For a brief overview on how to navigate and browse MDOT Innovations, please see the  How to use the MDOT Innovations website  video on the MDOT YouTube channel.

Shoreline communities in the western part of the state, like Pentwater, Whitehall, and Montague along the US-31 Business Route (BR), have become susceptible to Lake Michigan’s cyclical water levels, which can lead to temporary flooding and subsequent road closures. When critical routes are closed, residents of these communities lose direct access to their homes and businesses.

With the goal of keeping roads open and communities connected, MDOT engineers collaborated closely with local authorities at these locations and other flood-prone sites across the state to develop a versatile  barrier system  to keep floodwater off the road.

The system primarily consists of a few simple products: sandbags, plastic landscaping liner, pumps, and heat tape. When these materials are combined, they create a resilient, weather-tested system that can be built and removed as needed throughout the year.

The  EMILY  was developed through MDOT while researching improved methods for detecting bridge scour. Scour occurs when high-velocity water removes sedimentation from a bridge structure causing large holes to form. This can cause undermining of the footings or exposure of piles, ultimately leading to bridge failure. Inspecting for scour is vital in determining the stability of a bridge and whether it should remain open for public use.

The EMILY is a 40-pound, mono hull unmanned surface vessel (USV) equipped with sonar. It transmits accurate real-time water depth readings and produces side and down-scan images of the substructure units and the streambed, all while the bridge inspectors operate it safely from the shoreline.

This innovation proved to be instrumental during the unprecedented flood event in May 2020 that impacted more than 20 state trunklines and local bridges in Midland, Gladwin, Saginaw, Arenac, and Iosco counties and displaced more than 10,000 households in Midland County. EMILY performed preliminary inspections of bridges across the counties as part of MDOT’s emergency repair efforts, which reportedly cut inspection times in half.

In March 2021, EMILY was included in the ASCE list of  13 Gamechangers , groundbreaking infrastructure projects from across the country.

MDOT was recently awarded funds to institutionalize  virtual public involvement  (VPI) in the department's State Long-Range Plan, capture best practices and lessons learned, and develop an informational brochure for distribution.

MDOT has found VPI to be an invaluable tool. Using digital technologies to engage individuals and visualize projects and plans, MDOT has been able to expand its reach to larger target audiences, increasing participation, convenience, transparency, and access, while decreasing costs resulting from staff time and project delays and providing project managers with an additional tool to attract more public involvement. MDOT has utilized VPI with pilot projects in Alger, Kent, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties, and two local agency pilot projects in the city of Ann Arbor.

MDOT has received national recognition for its efforts from the Volpe Center, AASHTO, FHWA, and the Mid America Association of State Transportation Officials (MAASTO).

The Gladwin County Road Commission, in partnership with the CRA of Michigan, was recently funded to develop a statewide Disaster Recovery Playbook and associated tools to benefit the 83 county and 560 municipal road agencies in Michigan in the event of a natural disaster.

The objective is to create readily accessible Michigan-based training tools, video podcasts and training support activities to assist local road officials in determining the appropriate action during an emergency event that will help them better document and secure available funding streams to assist in restoring the local transportation infrastructure.

Funding was provided to implement a  unmanned aerial systems  (UAS) program, including guidelines and piloting an emergency UAS command center. UAS can benefit nearly all aspects of highway transportation, from inspection to construction and operations, by collecting high-quality data automatically or remotely.

These relatively low-cost, innovative devices allow agencies to expedite the data collection needed for better-informed decisions while reducing the adverse impacts of temporary work zones on work crews and the traveling public.

Conventional subsurface exploration methods provide limited data for project design, which can result in constructability issues and increased cost.  Advanced Geotechnical Methods in Exploration  (A-GAME) helps to better understand the geotechnical conditions critical for the successful design of infrastructure projects.

Funding has aided in the adoption of this innovation that explores cone penetration testing (CPT) and offers solutions for generating more accurate geotechnical characterizations that improve design and construction, which leads to shorter project delivery times and reduces the risks associated with limited data on subsurface site conditions.