Skip to main content
EnglishEN
European Commission logo print header

Prediction of congestion and incidents in Real time, for intelligent Incident Management and Emergency traffic management

Objective

The project aims to increase the effectiveness of incident detection and incident management on motorways and adjacent urban networks and increase road safety, through the development of innovative methods. The project will build on recent achievements in management of incidents and road emergencies in EU projects such as IN-RESPONSE, and will enhance the complete incident and road emergency management chain. The innovative methods include improvements in the dynamic prediction, detection, and verification of incidents that increase the benefits to the user and facilitate the integration of high-level technologies now reaching the marketplace. The new methods also address the integration of motorway and urban incident management and this leads to improved overall incident management and safety. A prototype will be developed including databases, models and algorithms, and will be tested with offline data from three EU sites as well as specific on-line applications at two sites. Evaluation will include separate testing of each prototype module, such as prediction and verification modules, and a simulation tool will evaluate components of the system.

Objectives:
To develop innovative methods to increase the effectiveness of incident management policies and increase road safety. The innovations include
(a) methods for predicting incidents or congestion in real time, which can activate traffic management strategies to reduce the likelihood of incidents,
(b) improved systems for sensing incidents, such as sensing hardware or scene analysis,
(c) improved integration of incident verification to increase the reliability of incident management, and
(d) integration of aspects of motorway and urban-network incident management strategies to increase the effectiveness of incident management and traffic management strategies in urban/interurban areas.

Work description:
Models of incident or congestion prediction will be developed to predict the likelihood of occurrence of incidents or congestion in real time. The prediction models can activate traffic management and control strategies to reduce the likelihood of congestion and incidents before they occur. Improved sensing can lead to increased reliability of incident management. Improving the integration of verification messages, particularly those from cellular phones, will lead to increased effectiveness of incident management. Integrating incident management strategy aspects, previously built for either urban networks or motorways, can be used to increase the effectiveness of strategies in emergency traffic management applications, and increase road safety.

These methods will integrate road infrastructure (e.g. machine vision hardware and communications installations, VMS) and portable devices (e.g. GSM) and will be based on widely available communications and positioning mechanisms, and media-independent, open architectures adapting mobile network intelligence for optimal use in transport. Simulation tests will determine possible conflicts between old and improved traffic management policies. Tests will focus on the capabilities of intelligent techniques, and on the effective use of new information, such as prediction and verification information, that were not possible with classical techniques. Barriers, technical and institutional, to integration will be identified. Evaluation will assess the performance, cost-effectiveness and interoperability of the new methods. This will be achieved with the adaptation of data and conditions from three main EU sites, i.e. Munich, Southampton and Thessaloniki, with transferability examined also at Athens and Barcelona.

Milestones:
Innovative ITS components will be designed for integration with already developed systems at project sites, responding to enhanced user needs and targets. The functional and communications specifications, interfaces and architecture of the new system will be identified. A prototype will be developed including databases, models and algorithms and tested with offline site data and online applications. The system will be evaluated with the use of a simulation tool. Intermediate results will be available at the end of the first year of work, which will include preliminary versions of the simulation testing and aspects of the prototype under development.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
EU contribution
No data
Address
HIGHFIELD
SO17 1BJ SOUTHAMPTON
United Kingdom

See on map
Total cost
No data

Participants (13)

Share this page

Download

Last update: 13 June 2005

My Booklet

Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/IST-1999-13036

European Union, 2024