Overview
The use of hard-shoulders as a running lane has been negotiated and agreed with third parties with the proviso that monitoring takes place.
Continuous and contiguous manual monitoring has a limited application and cannot be achieved without a large number of staff and such an approach is prone to human error, operator fatigue and complacency (the issue of competency depends upon the implementation).
The development of an automatic system using off-the-shelf components and proven data fusion and incident/anomaly identification techniques is proposed.
The objective is to determine the suitability of currently available detector technology for monitoring the motorway hard shoulder when it is used as a running lane.
Suitable detectors will be subject to integration into a sister project that aims to develop an automatic hard shoulder monitoring system for the ATM Pilot Scheme.
The contractor will undertake a desktop sift of potentially suitable detectors. These will be narrowed down to the best candidates to take forward for testing.
The contractor will devise and carry out a series of tests to ascertain whether these detectors wholly or partially meet the needs for automatic detection. If time and funding allow, any manufacturers who also have suitable prototype equipment will be invited to demonstrate their equipment, with a view towards use in the future, after suitable development.