4-D Imaging To Help Inauguration Tourists
How the Story Came to Be:
University Communications has long promoted the work and expertise of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology and its laboratory, which is the university's premier research laboratory for development of intelligent transportation system tools. When we learned less than two weeks before the presidential inauguration that the lab's Regional Integrated Transportation Information System was going to be used by regional transportation and security officials to help them visualize and manage traffic and accidents or incidents, we knew we had a good PR opportunity.
How University Communications prepared for release to the media:
When University Communications learned of the inaugural use the CATT Lab's real-time traffic monitoring and 4D visualization systems, one major news outlet, CNN, had already independently learned of it and scheduled a visit to the lab. We talked with CATT lab director Michael Pack, both separately and during the CNN filming, to get information, video and still images that we could use in pitching the story. University Communications strategic input to overcome challenges
An email touting the inauguration traffic story and CATT's expertise was prepared and sent out to regional and national media. The email secondarily pitched a second "traffic" angle, UM expertise related to the expected crush of cell phone traffic by those attending the inauguration. We simultaneously updated our featured list of experts on all things inaugural to also include these new traffic/security topics and experts. Next we created and sent out news release about the CATT Lab's system and its use in the inauguration. This was all done in advance of inauguration. A follow-up post-inaugural release featured comments of officials on the value of our system as well as those of UM students involved in creating the system and running it during inauguration.
Significance in the media marketplace:
Following University Communications extensive UM media outreach about this story (and the precursor CNN story which our pitches highlighted and linked to), the story was picked up by a number of broadcast outlets including national stories by NPR and ABC News and a local story by WMAR TV (Channel 2) in Baltimore. The UM release was carried or adapted on a number of web sites including Science Codex, DailyTech, ScienceMode, Softpedia, Eureka! Science News; PhysOrg.com, and Genetic Engineering News. The UM Newsdesk release also generated direct responses such as one from a Japanese company: "We have been collecting news relating to ... the field of transportation from around the world and putting it up on our website (http://www.transtex.jp). ... We have read your article and we would like to introduce this unique system in a short article on our website."
NPR: All Things Considered Story.
UM Newsdesk: UM High-Tech Solutions Ease Inaugural Challenges
--Lee Tune