Maritime freight transportation was a hot topic in Fort Smith last week when stakeholders from across Arkansas and the United States gathered at the WAIA/MARAD Roundtable Event held at the Peak Innovation Center on April 12. 

Co-organized by the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration, Western Arkansas Intermodal Authority, Western Arkansas Planning & Development District and Frontier Metropolitan Planning Organization, the roundtable event focused on current challenges facing maritime and multimodal transportation agencies, carriers and shippers and discussed funding opportunities and innovation solutions to address these challenges. 

Sarah Hernandez, associate professor of civil engineering and Walter E. Hicks and Blossom Russell Hicks Endowed Chair for Infrastructure Engineering, and Heather Nachtmann, professor of industrial engineering and Earl J. and Lillian P. Dyess Endowed Chair in Engineering, were invited speakers at the event. 

Hernandez presented on "Arkansas Port Sheds: Visualizing Impacts" and shared her concept of "port sheds," which fuse publicly available datasets, including truck and marine vessel tracking data and lock performance data, into freight fluidity measures to visualize and understand the economic impacts of freight activity at a port. 

Nachtmann overviewed MarTREC, the Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center led by the U of A (martrec.uark.edu), and shared how maritime transportation stakeholders can engage in research and workforce development opportunities with MarTREC.

The featured speaker was U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration Administrator Ann Phillips, who discussed the importance of the inland and coastal waterways to the nation's multimodal supply chain and presented several funding programs available to expand maritime transportation. 

Home to the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System and more than 1,000 miles of navigable waterways, Arkansas is a major contributor to the nation's inland waterway transportation system.

Resilient and efficient movement of maritime freight across domestic and international supply chains is vital to the nation's economic strength and to maintaining and improving the quality of life for all Americans.

"MarTREC is a key contributor to preserving the nation's transportation system through sustainable and resilient maritime and multimodal supply chains and infrastructure," said Nachtmann, who is also director of MarTREC. "It was an honor for us to share the podium with Administrator Phillips."