Government Advisory Board

Close communication with city, county, state and federal authorities is a special focus, as are dialogues with the scientific community and with industry. The goal is to maximize synergy and to keep research strategy aligned with the real-life needs of communities and the economy. A Government Advisory Board has been established to ensure mutual knowledge transfer between research and government authorities. Its major aim is to initiate the transfer of new scientific findings, methods or tools into communities – and in return, provide feedback on their usability in practice.

Program on AV Infrastructure

Takes an integrated approach towards understanding the interaction between AVs and smart infrastructure, including connected data, basemapping, and exchange protocols.

Program on AV Technology

Concentrates on the development of full suite of test environments for the safe evaluation and deployment of vehicles, sensors, hardware, software, and other technologies.

Secretariat

The Secretariat of the proving grounds is a group of people that fulfill the central administrative duties of the Proving Grounds project. They are responsible for taking minutes during meetings, maintaining a database of contacts for stakeholders and workgroup members, and producing and publishing updates for public consumption via the proving grounds website. It provides administrative support to the Executive Committee and Director, from IT solutions to writing/editing official proving grounds documents.

Executive Committee

The Executive Committee, made up of the program director and members of the program management board, jointly oversees the big-picture view of the Proving Grounds project and regularly reviews issues faced by the organization. The Committee nominates and vets new board members and tracks the progress of strategic plans. They will also meet as needed to handle any emergency issues.

Director

The Director provides strategic guidance to the Executive Committee and acts as a liaison between the committee and the rest of the proving grounds. He oversees the progress of the joint program management board and its oversight of workgroups and work packages. The director is responsible for ensuring the secretariat and the Programs on AV Technology, Infrastructure and Governance are fully staffed and functioning well. He is also the liaison between the proving grounds and its stakeholders, including auto manufacturers, elected officials, and the people of the state of Wisconsin via the media.

Wisconsin AV Proving Ground Programs

The experts on the proving grounds project will be grouped by three areas of expertise: technology, infrastructure, and governance (see diagram, above). Each of these three groups will have a chairperson as well as representatives involved in the group’s work.

Advising the three groups will be a Government advisory board, comprising state and federal officials representing all levels of government, and the Steering Committee (see diagram, above).

Each working group (see below) will focus on a specific area of importance to testing, developing, supporting and/or regulating AVs, and the work packages that comprise them will each have a “lead”, a member of each of the three program areas (technology, infrastructure and governance) that will be a point of accountability and information flow. The program chairs will ensure that the focus of the working groups stays consistent with the overall roadmap – the strategic plan for the proving grounds. Every working group will have a coordinator whose role is to set another “roadmap” for the individual work package and ensure each package is working in support of that roadmap. The coordinator will be a person who is well-versed in the topic of their workgroup and will be available to each lead person to help solve problems and answer any questions that arise from the work.

Government Advisory Board Members

This is where the list of government advisory board members will go. For now, here are the results of a recent brainstorming session between Steve Caya, Infrastructure Program Chair, Rob Fischer, Governance Program Chair, and Peter Rafferty, with UW-Madison.