A team of Iowa State University students (above) took home top honors in the 2026 Transportation Technology Tournament; a contest hosted by the National Operations Center of Excellence or NOCoE.
[Above photo by NOCoE]
NOCoE – a partnership of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, with support from the Federal Highway Administration – said that the 2026 tournament’s challenge centered on developing an intelligent transportation system (ITS) and Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) solution to improve transportation safety.
NOCoE said in a statement that four teams competed for the tournament’s grand prize this year at ITE Annual Meeting July 19-22 in Detroit. The four finalists – from Iowa State University, the University of Texas at Arlington, and two teams from South Carolina State University – were selected from among the 15 teams that entered the tournament earlier this year.
The Iowa State University team’s winning project drew on Iowa crash records from 2018 to 2022 and designed a connected vehicle–based queue warning system to address secondary crashes concentrated on high-speed, rural, non-work-zone highway segments where drivers are least likely to anticipate a disruption.
The solution fuses original equipment connected vehicle data, aggregated probe data, and roadway sensors to detect queue formation in real time and deliver the queue’s location and length to approaching drivers, NOCoE noted.
Warnings reach both connected and non-connected vehicles through multiple channels: in-vehicle dashboards, freight application programming interfaces or APIs displayed on electronic logging devices, third-party navigation apps, and dynamic message signs; all of which helped prompt controlled deceleration and reduce abrupt braking, thus interrupting the chain of events that so often lead to secondary crashes on rural corridors.
More information about this yearly technology tournament is available at https://transportationops.org/transportation-technology-tournament.
AASHTO
AASHTO Helps Host State Public Transportation Meeting
July 24, 2026
AASHTO
