In this desert environment, transportation is one of the primary environmental concerns with regard to air quality, water quality, habitat protection, land use, hazardous waste transportation and noise pollution. As the border area population continues to grow, addressing the links between transportation and the environment will only increase in importance.

A key challenge to addressing the transportation-related environmental concerns in the US–Mexico border region is obtaining enough information to make sound policy decisions. To meet this challenge, the ATRI has established BRITE as a unique repository of environmental information.

To date, the ATRI has received support from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department for BRITE and has completed four segments of the BRITE with four research matrices and an annotated bibliography, covering Air Quality, Water Quality, Habitat, and Land-Use issues, related to transportation in the border environment. In each section, a thorough literature review on the topic was conducted, all pertinent studies, reports, and documents were summarized, and then these resources were compiled into the topic’s own matrix and text-based annotated bibliography.

The BRITE database can be used by researchers, NGOs, government officials, citizen groups, students, or any individual who has an interest in obtaining academic or scientific research on these issues. The ATRI is continually collecting bibliographic information pertinent to addressing transportation-related environmental issues along the US–Mexican Border from various publication sources in print and electronic media.

Goals of BRITE

• To provide information on border-region, transportation-related environmental research.
• To enable researchers, interest groups, planners, and the general public to have easy access to this information.
• To increase information exchange and collaboration.

• BRITE allows state and local governments to avoid redundancy–saves resources.
• BRITE allows interested groups and individuals, as well as the general public to be fully informed.
• BRITE allows MPOs, NGOs, academic and government researchers to build upon existing work.