Using Archived ITS Data to Optimize Incident Detection and Management (0-4745-S)

Transportation management centers (TMCs) generate enormous amounts of data. Examples include detector data, automated vehicle identification (AVI) data, closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera video streams, alarm data, incident data, system diagnostics data, operator log data, changeable message sign (CMS) data, lane control signal (LCS) data, and lane closure data. Most of the data generated by TMCs support TMC real-time operations. In practice, TMCs have tended to archive only a few data elements, with the rest of the data being overwritten after a short time period or simply discarded. Today, archived intelligent transportation system (ITS) data applications have tended to focus on ITS data as a resource for transportation planning and/or research, mainly for the generation of aggregated system performance measures such as corridor travel times, speeds, and delays. As the number of applications of ITS data increases, interest is growing in finding ways to use such data to optimize TMC operations. One specific area of interest is the development of techniques and procedures that use archived ITS data to help optimize incident detection and management practices.