“Intelligent transportation” is not a new concept, says Sarah Catz, a research associate at the University of California, Irvine’s Institute of Transportation Studies. The first ITS America conference, which she attended, was held 28 years ago.
“The big difference now is how far the technologies have advanced and the fact that, today, ITS solutions can be found at just about every transportation agency in the country,” Catz says.
She points to the California Department of Transportation as an example. “If you go into Caltrans headquarters, you’ll see a huge room with tons of TVs and several people at a table monitoring what’s going on,” she says. “If they see there’s an accident, for instance, they can immediately get law enforcement and emergency vehicles out there and get traffic moving again. They’re able to take action very quickly because they have access to so much real-time information.”
LEARN MORE: How to improve storage capabilities for public transit video surveillance.
Using Data to Better React to Conditions
CDOT has placed dozens of sensors along I-70 that collect data on everything from weather conditions to vehicle speeds and traffic volume. That data is aggregated through the agency’s Ciena fiber-optic network infrastructure, then fed into a real-time data hub in a centralized repository in Google Cloud.
From there, the data is processed by an analytics platform that relies on an algorithm to determine whether roadway variables warrant a change in CDOT’s digitally posted speed limits.
