Road Traffic Management Using Integrated Live Cameras

The aim of an effective and efficient mobility management system must be to prevent unnecessary traffic, to shift traffic to environmentally friendly transport modes and to use the existing resources as efficiently as possible. A commonly shared opinion concerning mobility management is that measures need to be taken to reduce the transport demand in stressed road networks and to be use the networks more efficiently.  

Because traffic events are influenced by a multitude of individual decisions taken by the traffic participants, the most promising way to achieve a sustainable improvement of the mobility behavior is the targeted support of these decisions. In this respect, it is very important to provide information that is as current and reliable as possible, and to give high-quality advice. Sub-project 5 of the »intermobil Region Dresden« lead project, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), made a major contribution in this field by harmonizing and integrating existing and planned traffic management and control measures in the Dresden region.

For the first time in Germany, a live camera system has recorded and provided necessary information about the traffic state in addition to conventional traffic detectors in urban traffic networks, on main roads and highways. The camera system, which is the key component of the sub-project, records video images of relevant road network sections and analyzes with the help of sepcialized image processing alsgorithms. The detected traffic state description parameters and the camera images are transmitted via a radio network of universal utility.

In addition to the acquired traffic data, further information about traffic-relevant events and weather conditions are provided as input data for the road traffic management system. Within this system, the extensive data material is evaluated so that it is possible to execute efficient traffic state analyses and give reliable short-term prognoses on both moving and stationary traffic. In the end, the traffic state information is distributed via user-friendly services. These services may be collective as well as individual information systems that offer routing across all transport modes and other options. With the help of traffic management systems, drivers are guided onto less crowded alternative routes and informed of existing interchanges to public transportation. The mobility management system (sub-project 6) further processes this information and provides it to the traffic participants in different ways, such as mobile communication, World Wide Web and PDAs.

• ISUP GmbH Dresden
• Landeshauptstadt Dresden
• Schlothauer und Partner GbR Dresden
  
• TU Dresden, Fakultät Verkehrswissenschaften »Friedrich List«