Reliability of 15-minute drone footage volume for estimating urban traffic flow rates: A preliminary study

Abstract

This study discusses the reliability of 15-minute data collection from the drone footage as an alternative for conventional 1-hour data collection for traffic analysis. The selected study locations are five urban intersections along Jalan Bakri, Muar, Johor. The 12-hour data was obtained from a manual commuter counting to identify the peak hour along Jalan Bakri. Based on the time series analysis, the peak hour was identified which is from 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. with a peak hour factor of 0.94. The actual flow rate during peak hour and the volume from 15-minute drone footage multiply by 4 and peak hour factor value were compared using the t-test. The P-value obtained is 0.732 which is greater than 0.05 for 95 percent confidence Therefore, the difference between the means is not statistically significant. In summary, there is evident to prove that the outcome from the drone footage data during the peakiest 15-minute interval has no significant difference with the outcome from 1-hour data collection during peak hour. This verification result shows that the 15-minute data collection during peak hour can be applied to facilitate the intersection performance analysis besides can enhance the use of drone in traffic study.