Retrieval Augmented Generation-based Large Language Models for Bridging Transportation Cybersecurity Legal Knowledge Gaps

As connected and automated transportation systems evolve, there is a growing need for federal and state authorities to revise existing laws and develop new statutes to address emerging cybersecurity and data privacy challenges. This study introduces a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based Large Language Model (LLM) framework designed to support policymakers by extracting relevant legal content and generating accurate, inquiry-specific responses. The framework focuses on reducing hallucinations in LLMs by using a curated set of domain-specific questions to guide response generation. By incorporating retrieval mechanisms, the system enhances the factual grounding and specificity of its outputs. Our analysis shows that the proposed RAG-based LLM outperforms leading commercial LLMs across four evaluation metrics: AlignScore, ParaScore, BERTScore, and ROUGE, demonstrating its effectiveness in producing reliable and context-aware legal insights. This approach offers a scalable, AI-driven method for legislative analysis, supporting efforts to update legal frameworks in line with advancements in transportation technologies.

@article{akbar2025_2505.18426,
  title={ Retrieval Augmented Generation-based Large Language Models for Bridging Transportation Cybersecurity Legal Knowledge Gaps },
  author={ Khandakar Ashrafi Akbar and Md Nahiyan Uddin and Latifur Khan and Trayce Hockstad and Mizanur Rahman and Mashrur Chowdhury and Bhavani Thuraisingham },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.18426},
  year={ 2025 }
}