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Using New Orleans as a case study, this thesis explores the conflation of vehicle probe data with various vessel datasets to characterize the interactions between container vessels and motor vehicles as it relates to interstate congestion in a port city. The case study investigates the impact of container vessel presence/size, fluctuations in container volumes, and container on barge services on roadway congestion. The exploration relies on comparing different conditions using cumulative distribution functions and the Innovative Trend Analysis. The results showed that fusing vehicle and vessel data is achievable and appropriate, but temporal and data completeness issues can effect results. The results also showed that by joining these modally disparate datasets together and analyzing them as one, additional context is added to discussions related to transportation operations and investment decision-making through either the confirmation or disproval of perceptions or expected results related to container truck traffic on an interstate.

The human hand, in building as in art, has left its impression on all the earliest forms of architecture. Its mark has been one of imperfection, variation, and uniqueness, and with these traits the personification of something innately human. This character, instilled into any work, immortalizes the idiosyncrasies descriptive of its creator. Rather than viewed as anachronism, inculcating the human component, "manufactum", into modern design reacquaints us with our own capricious temperaments. As powerful tools of the contemporary world heighten our faculty for exactitude, the prudence remains as to whether and when it is appropriate to do so.