Reducing Incident-Induced Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation: Use of Social Media Feeds as an Incident Management Support Tool

Ubiquitous connected devices and microblogging platforms, such as Twitter, are providing a huge amount of user-generated information that has a great potential for applications in transportation incident management (TIM) with minimal infrastructure required. In this study publicly posted Twitter posts were gathered using relevant keywords. While organizational Twitter accounts (e.g., DOT, news outlets) disseminate traffic information after an incident is reported and confirmed, tweets of personal accounts are more likely to contain previously unreported traffic information, and therefore are particularly valuable for TIM. A variety of information such as location, time, severity, extent of damage, presence of debris, and evolution of congestion can be extracted from the Twitter’s text. Such information is especially useful for TIM as the traditional sources for gathering traffic information, such as loop detectors and sensors, are expensive to construct and maintain for local and rural roads. Accident delay as well as emissions and fuel consumption were calculated using comprehensive incident data from the California Highway Patrol to demonstrate the benefits of using Twitter for TIM. As a result of the early detection, 4,046 vehicle-hours of delay savings, reduction in 5.9 kg of ROG, 133 kg of CO, 16.3 kg of NOx and 0.3 kg of PM 2.5 and 1,939 gal of gasoline and 622 gal of diesel were estimated to be saved – total monetary value of $75,600, i.e., $0.5 per mile per week in California. For incidents in New York State, for each accident recorded, accident delay as well as emissions and fuel consumption were estimated in order to benchmark the potential delay and savings due to early incident detection. The study concludes with recommendations for the application of social media for TIM.

• Record URL:
  https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/engineering/technical-services/trans-r-and-d-repository/C-14-11%2520Final%2520Report_2-2018.pdf
• 
• Record URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/40792
• Corporate Authors:

  University Transportation Research Center

  City College of New York
  Marshak Hall, Suite 910, 160 Convent Avenue
  New York, NY  United States  10031

  Stony Brook University

  Department of Civil Engineering
  Stony Brook, NY  United States  11794

  New York State Energy Research and Development Authority

  17 Columbia Circle
  Albany, NY  United States  12203

  New York State Department of Transportation

  50 Wolf Road
  Albany, NY  United States  12232

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Yazici, Anil
  • Kamga, Camille
  • Mudigonda, Sandeep
  • Almotahari, Seyedamirmasoud
• Publication Date: 2018-1

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Figures; Maps; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 110p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Exhaust gases; Fuel consumption; Incident detection; Incident management; Social media; Traffic delays; Traffic incidents
• Identifier Terms: Twitter
• Uncontrolled Terms: Text mining
• Geographic Terms: California; New York (State)
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01702891
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: NYSERDA Report No. 17-20, NYSDOT Report No. C-14-11, Report No. 55865-01-26
• Contract Numbers: NYSERDA Contract 46847; NYSDOT Contract C-14-11
• Files: NTL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Apr 24 2019 4:44PM