UA gets grant for maritime research

River transport focus of center

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will get $1.4 million from the federal government to establish a research center focused on improving river transportation, Arkansas’ U.S. Sens. Mark Pryor and John Boozman and U.S. Rep. Steve Womack said in a joint announcement Tuesday.

The university will create a Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center, also called MarTREC, according to the congressional news release.

“This was the result of an actual competition by the U.S. Department of Transportation,” said Kevin Hall, a civil engineering professor and head of the civil engineering department in UA’s College of Engineering.

The center, which will expand UA’s transportation research, will seek to improve the logistical management of inland waterway transportation and its connection with other means of transportation, Hall said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. The center will develop projects in conjunction with otherUA academic colleges and partners.

Other improvement areas will include building infrastructure, promoting livability and emergency management. He predicted that the research will include business, sociology and healthcare components.

The center might expand on past researchers’ work on “delivering health care to disaster-ravaged areas using inland waterways,” Hall said, which could help some areas when disasters have made roadways impassable.

Hall cited the White, Arkansas and Ouachita rivers as examples of what the research might involve, butadded that the Transportation Department is looking to improve “any river or waterway that you can transport goods or people on.”

“It’s basically getting people and goods from Point A to Point B safely, economically and in a sustainable manner - something that can be sustained,” he said.

“We’re just fortunate that we have a natural, living laboratory here in Arkansas,” Hall said.

Hall is also executive director of the civil engineering department’s Mack-Blackwell Rural Transportation Center, which pitched the MarTREC proposal. The federal grant seeks an equal match of the $1.4 million or in-kind support, he said, which will be determined once the projects are finalized.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 09/25/2013

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