Intelligent road transport flow management system: Basic ontology concepts

Effects of road infrastructure and traffic complexity in speed adaptation behaviour of distracted drivers

The development of road infrastructure in various countries is growing rapidly in line with the increasing need for more efficient transportation and better road access to various regions. Suppose in a country the road infrastructure is damaged. In that case, it will result in limited access to more efficient transportation, hinder the mobility of road and goods users, and potentially slow down economic growth. This study aims to determine the level of satisfaction of road users with the condition of the pavement on Jl. Pejuang-Sindangkasih, and determine the level of existing damage. This research is located on Jl. Pejuang-Sindangkasih, which is located in Majalengka District, Majalengka Regency, West Java. The data collection technique used is a questionnaire, which is intended to collect data on the level of damage felt, the impact of damage on comfort and safety, and road users' expectations for road repairs. Overall, this data provides a clear picture of the profile of road users on Jl. Pejuang-Sindangkasih and how they see the condition of the road. This information can be an important basis for road repair and maintenance to improve comfort and safety for all road users. Some respondents also emphasized the importance of immediate repairs to road damage to reduce the risk of accidents and vehicle damage. In addition, respondents from younger age groups tend to be more critical of road conditions and show a high awareness of the importance of good road infrastructure. Road damage is very dangerous for road users, especially for motorcycle users, and urgent repairs are needed. Overall, this information provides important information about the planning and implementation of road repairs, with a special emphasis on the most important elements to improve the safety and comfort of road users.

Road traffic is important to everybody in the world. People travel and commute everyday. For those who travel by cars (or other types of road vehicles), traffic congestion is a daily experience. One essential goal of traffic researchers is to reduce traffic congestion and to improve the whole traffic system operation and the environment. To achieve this goal, we have to first understand prevailing traffic situations, then perform pro-active traffic control and management. The estimation of traffic states in the past, in the present and in the future plays an important role in traffic management and control systems. This thesis focuses on the development of traffic state estimation approaches, which provide such traffic state information. In road networks, traffic states refer to typical quantities, such as travel times, traffic speeds, traffic flow and density. These quantities reflect the traffic conditions. Based on these data, we are able to find out when a traffic jam starts, or where a traffic accident occurs. However, it is not feasible to get the full picture of traffic states from the current monitoring systems. Due to cost and technical constraints, we can only obtain spatially and temporally discretised traffic data. These traffic data are collected mainly from point-based sensors, such as inductive loops, radars, and cameras. Alternatively, traffic information might be observed by probe vehicles with a selected penetration rate. In all cases, the detected data usually contain errors and noise, which might hinder further analyses. Based on these constraints, this thesis aims to develop a traffic state estimation procedure to solve the foregoing problems and to provide accurate and complete traffic state information. In this procedure, both traffic flow models and the available observation data are used to estimate the most probable traffic states within a data-assimilation framework. Our approach is formulated using a moving observer perspective, resulting in a Lagrangian formulation of traffic state estimation. In the Lagrangian coordinate system, coordinates move with the vehicles. The Lagrangian formulated first-order traffic flow model is applied to describe the evolution of traffic state variables. The proposed Lagrangian formulation of traffic state estimation offers both theoretical and computational advantages over the conventional Eulerian formation. Moreover, this approach can capture the dynamics of multiple vehicle classes by implementing a multi-class traffic flow model. In this thesis, data pre-processing methods are also developed to improve the quality of the observation inputs. Both Eulerian and Lagrangian sensing data are incorporated into the state estimation. The online technique, known as the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), is applied for data assimilation: this combines traffic model prediction with observation input correction. Importantly, the Lagrangian concept is not restricted to the EKF method with the first-order traffic flow model, but can also be applied to other data-assimilation techniques in combination with more involved macroscopic traffic flow models. A series of experimental studies based on both synthetic and real-world data have been performed to test the proposed methodology. These studies have validated both the mixed-class and the multi-class traffic state estimation methods. The results have demonstrated that the Lagrangian traffic state estimation outperforms the Eulerian approaches in the EKF-based framework, and the multi-class approach further improves the performance of state estimation compared with the mixed-class case. In summary, Lagrangian multi-class state estimation can provide accurate class-specific traffic information for class-specific control applications and traffic management.

India needs shift in thinking to improve road safety

Road traffic noise is one of the most relevant sources in the environmental noise pollution of the urban areas where dynamics of the traffic flow are much more complicated than uninterrupted traffic flows. It is evident that different traffic conditions would play the role in the urban traffic flow considering the dynamic nature of the traffic flow on one hand and presence of traffic lights, roundabouts, etc. on the other hand. The main aim of the current paper is to investigate the effect of different traffic conditions on urban road traffic noise. To do so, different traffic conditions have been theoretically generated by the Monte Carlo Simulation technique following the distribution of traffic speed in the urban roads. The “ASJ RTN-Model” has been considered as a base road traffic noise prediction model which would deal with different traffic conditions including steady and nonsteady traffic flow that would cover the urban traffic flow conditions properly. Having generated the vehicles speeds in different traffic conditions, the emitted noise (LWA) and subsequently the noise level at receiver (LA) were estimated by “ASJ RTN-Model.” Having estimated LWA and LA for each and every vehicle in each traffic condition and taking the concept of transient noise into account, the single event sound exposure levels (SEL) in different traffic conditions are calculated and compared to each other. The results showed that decelerated traffic flow had the lowest contribution, compared to congestion, accelerated flow, free flow, oversaturated congestion, and undersaturated flow by 16%, 14%, 12%, 12%, and 10%, respectively. Moreover, the distribution of emitted noise and noise level at receiver were compared in different traffic conditions. The results showed that traffic congestion had considerably the maximum peak compared to other traffic conditions which would highlight the importance of the range of generated noise in different traffic conditions.

Understanding interactions between Automated Road Transport Systems and other road users: A video analysis

Evaluation of the impacts of traffic states on crash risks on freeways

The rapid growth of satelite city in South Tangerang will directly impact road infrastructure and environmental conditions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate level of satisfaction and important of existing road infrastructure in satelite city. The study was to gain the perception of road users and other stakeholders regarding various elements of satelite city self-reliance in maintaining the quality of road infrastructure. Using one of satelite city in South Tangerang as a case, the specific research objectives are to: ascertain road user level of satisfaction with the road infrastructure and determine the most dominant factors affecting road user satisfaction. A questionnaire survey was conducted on road users in three selected roads at satelite city. Through a random sampling, a total of 384 responses were collected. After the survey, interviews were conducted with subject matter experts to understand the current practices and possible solutions to the problems. Data processing using SPSS software version 20.00 and analysed using Cronbach Alpha (α) statistical method and Importance Performance Matrix Analysis (IPMA) to know the level of satisfaction and important of user. The priority matrix analysis result shown that the safety improvement and comfort facilities for pedestrians, disabled provider and cyclists become important elements. The ranking of the importance elements in road performance based on user perceptions obtained the highest average value of 22 % which shows that the road safety element is the most important element in road performance.

A 10-year plan to reduce road-traffic accidents

Saudi Arabia is a vast country of 2,149,690 km2 , and is the largest Arab state in Western Asia. The Kingdom has been categorized as a high-income nation. It has a total population of approximately 27 million, one-fourth of whom are expatriates, with the highest population density (per km2 ) of 101 in Jizan, and 38 in Makkah, and the lowest of 2.8 in Najran, and 3.6 in Al Jawf. In KSA, motor vehicles are the main means of transportation within, and in-between cities. According to a recent estimate, more than 6 million cars are found on the roads of KSA. According to the morbidity and mortality records in the Ministry of Health hospitals, 30% of beds are occupied by RTA victims, and 81% of deaths in the hospitals are due to RTIs. KSA has recorded 86,000 deaths, and 611,000 injuries in RTAs with 7% resulting in permanent disabilities. The economic implications of RTAs estimated in terms of potential productive years life lost were examined in a study that reported a 31.6% increase in deaths due to RTA among males in 1997-2002 compared with a 1.3% increase in deaths due to RTA among females, and this percentage is increases with the number of vehicles and the numbers of road inside and outside the cities also. Road traffic accidents are a major health hazard with 19 killed daily, and 4 injured every hour in KSA. The young and economically e productive age groups are the most affected. In industrialized countries, the gross loss due to accidents is 1 - 2% of the national income, while for KSA, this loss has been estimated to be between 2.2 and 9%. The accident or injury reporting system in KSA has been much improved over the last couple of decades. Legislation on seat belt use has been put into practice, along with fully operational speed camera systems in large cities under the control of police departments, and police department record keeping of road mortalities and collisions. This improved reporting system shows a paradoxical rise in the magnitude of the problem over the years. The WHO has identified 5 Road Safety Pillars, namely: road safety management or policy; road infrastructure; safe vehicles; road users’ safe behavior; and post-crash care. Driver errors has been mostly reported in different regions of KSA as a cause of RTAs, in addition to some deplorable vehicles, and road conditions. However, post-crash care is largely ignored in all possible direct, or indirect evidence on the subject. There is scarcity of local standardized information on RTAs; therefore, measures for injury related mortality and disability are mostly available, either in popular press articles, police records, or WHO projected estimates. The aim of this study was to identify the changing trends and crucial preventive approaches to RTAs adopted in KSA over the last 2.5 decades. This analysis aims to provide helpful information in limiting the overall incidence of RTAs, and the severity of the resultant injuries in KSA.

Value creation of road infrastructure networks: A structural equation approach

Model-based traffic state estimation is used to reproduce traffic flow states from available observation data to assist traffic control and management. Owing to temporal and spatial observation limitations, numerous unknown traffic states and parameters exist in a nonlinear traffic flow model. These cannot be accurately estimated using filter methods with unavoidable parametric assumptions. In addition, the difficulty of estimation increases owing to an increased number of diverse traffic flow states and more unfavorable observation conditions at signalized intersections compared with those on the freeway. To overcome these problems, in this study, we developed switching state–space models to approximate the description of dynamic traffic flows at signalized intersections. By setting the traffic flow rate at the upstream and downstream boundaries of the road as observation data, we constructed a Bayesian learning framework in which all unknown variables in the models can be learned from the observed data. Finally, the utility of our method is demonstrated with the synthetic and the real NGSIM data. The result demonstrated that the proposed method could perform reasonably well in estimating the traffic flow dynamic process and states at signalized intersections, and could constitute an efficient scheme that avoids critical dependence on parametric calibrations and assumptions.

Characterizing vehicle-pedestrian interaction behavior in near misses: Insights from three different cities.

Road infrastructure at hilly area is highly needed and very important to support the economics stability in the district of Trenggalek. Road infrastructure becoming the most important nowadays for the people of Trenggalek especially for those who live in the highland. The problems recently happened until now is the road infrastructure in the district of Trenggalek especially in the highland are many damaged, not feasible and many more that requires to be restored. The type selection of the pavement that proper and suit for the highland in the district of Trenggalek is highly influenced by some criteria. And from some literature study we can draw conclusions in 6 (six) criteria those are, road user safety, road user amenities, cost of construction, ease of execution for the road construction, treatment of the road construction after the maintenance period expired and the availability of the materials. Then from interviewing the respondents that has experienced in the road construction especially in the highland of Trenggalek concluded 7 (seven) criteria those are, road user safety, road user amenities, cost of construction, situation and condition of the project location, treatment of the road construction after the maintenance period expired and the durability to the scouring water.

Road infrastructure is a land transportation infrastructure that affects the development of an area. When infrastructure is damaged, distribution between regions will be disrupted and have an impact on regional economic development, in addition to the inconvenience felt by road users. This condition occurs on provincial roads in Pemalang District which are damaged. Roaddamage was caused by the passing of the Pemalang-Batang Toll Road construction project so that the volume of vehicles passing exceeded the capacity of the road. The high growth of traffic because economic growth can cause serious problems if it is notbalanced with the maintenance and improvement of the quality of existing road facilities and infrastructure. It is necessary to addroad infrastructure and good pavement planning and sustainable road maintenance so that road conditions remain safe andcomfortable to provide services for vehicle traffic. The purpose of this study is to find economic costs to repair road damage. Theresearch method used is descriptive quantitative method. This research was conducted at Jalan Letjend DI Panjaitan in PemalangDistrict. From the results of this analysis, it was found that the damage that occurred on Jalan Letjend DI. Panjaitan in PemalangDistrict according to the Bina Marga method shows the number of road conditions 58.30% (good), 10% (minor damage), and31.60% (heavily damaged). Improvement methods for good road conditions and minor damage are Bina Marga Standards andrepairs to heavily damaged road conditions using a rigid pavement method with a thickness of 25 cm. Total budget of Rp. 2,880,928,554.00 can save 72.57% compared to the calculation of Bina Marga Standards using overall pavement repairs.