IRRIS

IRRIS (Intelligent Road/Rail Information Server) was a Web-based geospatial transportation-information system built for the Army's surface deployment and transportation-engineering community. It integrated data on road characteristics, bridge and infrastructure locations, route video logs, feature attribute data, and aerial/satellite imagery with real-time travel conditions — congestion, weather, road closures, and construction — to support route planning and deployment. Per a primary SDDCTEA source (Traffic Engineering and Highway Safety Bulletin 16-01, Oct. 2016), IRRIS has since been succeeded by the Transportation Geo-Spatial Information System (TGIS); the legacy hostname irris.tea.army.mil now serves as the TGIS access-request gateway rather than a standalone IRRIS login.

What it was

IRRIS let authorized users obtain detailed, timely information about road conditions, construction, incidents, and weather that could affect the movement of personnel and cargo from origin to port, through a browser-based map interface. It drew on transportation infrastructure data spanning many data sets covering roads, bridges, tunnels, and dams, combined with route video logs and imagery. IRRIS won a U.S. Army Digital Government Award (2003, awarded to TEA by MIT and Accenture) and a cartographic excellence award (GeoSpatial World 2002) for this work.

Who operates it now

IRRIS was built and sustained by the Transportation Engineering Agency (TEA), the engineering element of the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC). On September 24, 2025, the Secretary of the Army approved redesignating SDDC as the U.S. Army Transportation Command (ARTRANS); TEA was redesignated alongside it (commonly referenced as ARTRANSTEA going forward). ARTRANS remains the Army service component command to USTRANSCOM. IRRIS was also previously shared outside the Army — SDDC TEA provided IRRIS technology to FEMA to support disaster-response transportation planning. The successor system, TGIS, continues to be operated by the same Transportation Engineering Agency.

Access

Per the 2016 SDDCTEA primary source, the successor system (TGIS) requires an account, requested via the SDDCTEA website, and related TGIS components (Enterprise GIS Catalog, Enterprise Map Viewer) explicitly require a Common Access Card (CAC). The legacy logtool.com listing for IRRIS itself recorded "account required" plus a .mil-domain requirement for access. The directory's stored access value of "public" does not match either of these — the tool was never open to the general public.

How logisticians use it

Transportation planners, deployment personnel, and transportation engineers used (and, via TGIS, continue to use) this system to assess routes (road and bridge characteristics, clearances, restrictions), monitor conditions affecting movement (traffic, weather, closures, construction), and support mission planning, in-transit visibility, and transportation-engineering analysis for military surface movements.

History & lineage

IRRIS had a long service history with SDDC TEA, including recognition with a Digital Government Award and a cartographic excellence award, and a documented instance of TEA extending IRRIS technology to FEMA for disaster-response use. By 2015–2016, IRRIS had been evolved into the Transportation Geo-Spatial Information System (TGIS), per a SDDCTEA primary source and a contemporaneous contractor (GeoDecisions) announcement of the TGIS development contract. In 2025 its parent command, SDDC, was redesignated as the U.S. Army Transportation Command (ARTRANS), with TEA redesignated in turn — a further naming change affecting references to the operating organization.

Related systems

Superseded by the Transportation Geo-Spatial Information System (TGIS), and related to other SDDC/ARTRANS transportation-engineering and deployment-planning tools, including in-transit visibility and geospatial mission-management systems maintained by the same Transportation Engineering Agency.