SENSOR - Secondary Road Network Traffic Management Strategies - Handbook for Data Collection, Communication and Organisation
Overview
Background & policy context:
There are currently a large number of traffic and transport applications that are using advanced Information Technologies and are efficiently managing specific events or supporting the decision process of traffic/transport planners and decision makers. However, these existing tools lack interoperability, which would allow for a general analysis of a given scenario.
Efficient road traffic and information management systems need appropriate details on the current network situation. A lot of research has already been conducted on traffic data acquisition on motorways, but well equipped networks account for only 20% of the European inter-urban network and there is still a lack in methods, procedures, and means of data collection, communication and organisation for secondary road networks.
Objectives:
SENSOR's overall objectives were to:
- Improve the level of service for secondary road network users (through RTTI for example)
- Optimise information management to improve road management by relevant authorities.
- Implement a traffic management strategy at a network level.
In order to attain these primary objectives, SENSOR had to meet the following set of requirements:
- The development of a Handbook for planning, implementing and managing road traffic data collection in a cost-efficient way
- The development of a Decision Support System designed to answer questions like: "I have N additional sensors of type X, where should I place them, and what will be the benefit?"
- The provision of strategies for implementing real time data collection.
Methodology:
The SENSOR project was organised around 2 key issues:
- the collection of data
- the organisation and use of the collected data.
The first issue was carried out along the following methodological steps:
- User involvement. This step assesed the need to collect relevant data, through interaction with users (mainly road authorities)
- What to collect. This step proposed a guideline for defining the necessary data to be collected for secondary-road traffic management, while stressing cost-effectiveness.
- How to collect. At this stage, it was necessary to produce a detailed inventory of systems and devices for data collection and guidelines for optimal collection method.
- Where to collect. As in Step 3, it was necessary to issue guidelines defining the optimum number and locations of data acquisition points.
The second issue (organisation and use of data) was less technical:
- Organisational aspects. This step put forward a comprehensive methodology for building an efficient data management system including its' physical and logical requirements. This led to providing a set of recommendations for organising efficient data-exchange.
- Linking. The aim was to establish guidelines linking the different aspects of data management in an optimised way: the various tasks related to data collection, management, and exploitation were linked together by developing an advanced software tool, the SENSOR DSS (Decision Support System).
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