Improving the Effectiveness of Smart Work Zone Technologies

This project evaluates the effectiveness of sensor network systems for work zone traffic estimation. The comparative analysis is performed on a work zone modeled in microsimulation and calibrated with field data from two Illinois work zones. Realistic error models are used to generate noisy measurements corresponding to Doppler radar sensors, remote traffic microwave sensors (RTMS), and low-energy radar (LER). The velocity, queue length, and travel time are estimated with three algorithms based on (1) interpolation, (2) spatio-temporal smoothing, and a (3) flow model–based Kalman filter. More than 700 sensor and algorithm configurations are evaluated, and the accuracy of the resulting traffic estimates are compared with the true traffic state from the microsimulation. The nonlinear Kalman filter provides up to 30% error reduction over other velocity estimators when the RTMS spacing exceeds 2 miles and generally offers the best performance for queue and travel time estimation.

• Record URL:
  https://apps.ict.illinois.edu/projects/getfile.asp?id=5074
• 
• Record URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/31696
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/01979191
• Corporate Authors:

  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

  Illinois Center for Transportation
  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  Urbana, IL  United States  61801

  Illinois Department of Transportation

  Bureau of Materials and Physical Research
  126 East Ash Street
  Springfield, IL  United States  62704-4766

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Li, Yanning
  • Mori, Juan Carlos Martinez
  • Work, Daniel B
• Publication Date: 2016-11

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 130p
• Serial:
  • Civil Engineering Studies, Illinois Center for Transportation Series
  • Publisher: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • ISSN: 0197-9191

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Algorithms; Kalman filtering; Microsimulation; Sensors; Traffic estimation; Travel time; Velocity; Work zones
• Uncontrolled Terms: Queue length
• Geographic Terms: Illinois
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01618814
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: FHWA-ICT-16-021, ICT-16-023, UILU-ENG-2016-2023
• Contract Numbers: R27-155
• Files: NTL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Dec 16 2016 11:34AM