Traffic flow sensors and systems engineering for traffic management

What is it about?

The subject matter is suited for undergraduate and graduate students; researchers; and practitioners from transportation institutes, agencies, and contracting companies who wish to obtain the knowledge required to develop requirements and design concepts for intelligent transportation systems. This book is responsive to the needs of personnel in agencies serving local, regional, state, and multistate or multinational jurisdictions desiring knowledge of modern traffic management systems, traffic flow data acquisition methods, specification of data requirements, automated vehicles and vehicle systems, connected (cooperative) vehicles, the systems engineering process, and National Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Architectures. Readers gain insights into sensor (detector) operation and selection for effective gathering of street and controlled-access highway data and information needed for enhancing the safety of the travelling public, increasing their mobility on freeways and tollways, and adding predictability to travel times. Intelligent transportation systems address these goals through strategies that include automatic incident detection, active transportation and demand management, traffic-adaptive signal control, and efficient dispatching of emergency response providers. The types of sensors examined include inductive loops, magnetometers, magnetic sensors, video detection systems (machine vision sensors), presence-detecting microwave radar sensors, microwave Doppler sensors, passive infrared sensors, lidars, ultrasonic sensors, and acoustic sensors. The strengths and limitations of each are explored so that an informed choice can be made for a particular application. Data utilization is discussed to illustrate how it influences the corresponding accuracy specification for the sensor. In addition, alternative sources of traffic flow data are described. These include license-plate, media access control (MAC) address, and toll-tag readers that exploit mobile devices to gather travel time, speed, and origin–destination pair data. In the future, cooperative vehicle or connected vehicle data will also be available via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) wireless communications.

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Why is it important?

The growth in the number and types of driver assist and automated features appearing in automobiles and the rapid acceleration of autonomous or self-driving vehicle technologies and configurations is influencing not only technical matters, but also security, policy, planning, legal, and institutional interests. Vehicle automation is evolving rapidly and, while the material presented in this area was up-to-date as of the time of publication, the reader is advised to consult trade publications and government notices and press releases for the latest regulations and policies affecting these vehicles. The systems engineering process and the National ITS Architecture frameworks are ideal for originating concepts and architectures that meet the needs of stakeholders that own, operate, and rely on multimodal transportation systems for commuting and their livelihood. The latter chapters of this book introduce the reader to sensor and data fusion and its application to traffic management. This subject is gaining relevance as traffic data acquisition devices proliferate and the need for more accurate and timely traffic flow information increases.

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