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Monitor Integrated Safety System

Final Report Summary - MISS (Monitor Integrated Safety System)

The MISS project proposed an innovative platform to dynamically sense and predict natural and infrastructure conditions in order to improve the safety and the efficiency of road transport operations in a multi-environmental scenario. This project wanted to increase citizens' and road operators' safety by enabling an intelligent and dynamic road surveillance network and by streamlining the tasks of law enforcement and road maintenance agencies and organisations.

In particular, the following innovative solutions have been proposed:
- a unified operative centre that enables road maintenance and fire brigade officers to share information effectively,
- mobile units that can effectively exchange data with the UOC (i.e. acquisition of digital images (or short video sequences) to record road conditions),
- risk assessment system combined with traffic flow models.

The platform is composed by two main components:
1. the 'unified operative centre' (UOC) aimed at improving vehicles' safety and mobility. The UOC has to support and integrate the activities of different structures at provincial level. It manage the road monitoring activities of these organisations: urban police, civil protection and road maintenance services, and will support operational, and planning decisions, extending road knowledge, and using information technology tools to store and to extract all needed information. The UOC shares technological and human resources, leaving the three entities' services virtually separated. In this way, it will be possible to reduce, both management and structural costs. Further application could be easily developed and implemented for other local fleet managers, such us public transport operators and fire brigades.
2. an innovative on-board kit installed on fleet cars and will include a black box named 'MISS storage & communication unit' (MSCU), where infrastructure data and road events can be stored. In case of need, they can be sent to the UOC via a radio communication network.

The project was structured into the following work packages (WPs):
WP1 - Project management (SINTRA)
WP2 - User needs, service scenario and user requirements (CRF)
WP3 - System design (REG)
WP4 - Prototype implementation (REG)
WP5 - On field testing and demonstration (PROBO)
WP6 - Industrial exploitation (CERTH)
WP7 - Dissemination and promotion (SRM)

The main functionalities of the MISS platform are:
1. To detect infrastructure hazards - such as debris on the road, pavement deterioration and stalled vehicles;
2. To communicate data on detected hazards via a high-speed wireless communication network to the centralised UOC;
3. To record short video and audio;
4. To process the raw data (recorded, fused and coupled with existing data in a geo-coded database) and produce reliable targeted information for various types of users (travellers, emergency vehicles, vehicle fleets, other);
5. To share targeted information among different executive monitoring units.

Being an integrated framework for sensing, collecting, communicating, processing, and disseminating information on roadway hazards, the MISS platform consists of:
1. An innovative on-board vehicle-based detection kit called MISS Storage & Communication Unit (MSCU);
2. Existing communication technologies (via a GPRS or TETRA network) to exchange information with a Unified Operative Centre (UOC);
3. A geo-reference database to store this information on a geo-coded network as raw data;
4. Advanced algorithms to fuse the detected real-time data gathered by several organisations with static infrastructure and historical traffic and control information, so that reliable and consistent traffic information can be shared;
5. Based on the results of the elaboration, secondary descriptive (what the network prevailing condition is) and prescriptive (what a vehicle shall do to avoid hazards and congestion) information is produced. In addition, dynamic route planning algorithms have been developed specifically for emergency vehicles (police, fire department, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), hazardous materials response, towing services, other) to/from the scene of an incident;
6. Intelligent communication schemes to allow targeted information dissemination to clerical staff and drivers, based on their location and projected route (e.g. if they are likely to be in a problematic area, they will be informed), and to avoid problems with information overloading.