The patterns of North American freight flows continue to evolve in response to changing economic forces and political decisions.  Public and private data users are applying border flow data to enhance operations, plan for future infrastructure, and improve the economic prospects of regions and firms.  Improvements in border freight data could provide public officials and private industries with a more reliable, standard, consistent, and detailed source of information for making investment and operating decisions.  This workshop will build on the May, 2007 North American Freight Transportation Data Workshop and review recent work on the use of current data sources and highlight specific opportunities to improve the availability, access and use of data for evaluating programs, informing policy development, and making business decisions. Potential topics to be discussed include the following:

• Integration of multiple data sources - examples, opportunities, needs and benefits

• Applications of national data border crossing data programs

-          BTS: Transborder, Commodity Flow Survey (CFS)

-          Who uses the data and why, highlighting creative uses

-          “Stealth” use and question of value

-          Security barriers to the use of existing data sets - real and imagined

-          Sustaining national programs

• Coordination & collaborations

-          Who's doing what to share data - examples of good (interesting) practices

-          Public-private collaborations

-          International collaborations

• Use of archived real time data for analytical and planning purposes

-          Uses of real time data

-          Collaboration and institutional issues

o        Confidentiality issues

o        Value proposition