Automatic positioning of traffic management cameras on roadway incidents

Agency roadside cameras play a critical role in traffic incident management by helping dispatchers quickly identify the precise location of incidents when receiving reports from motorists with varying levels of spatial accuracy. During real-time incident dispatching, reducing the time it takes to identify the most relevant cameras and setting their view on the incident is an important opportunity to improve incident management dispatch times.

 

This research developed a camera-to-mile marker mapping technique that automatically sets the camera view to a specified mile marker within the field-of-view of the camera. Over 350 traffic cameras along Indiana’s 2250 directional miles of interstate were mapped to approximately 5000 discrete locations that correspond to approximately 780 directional miles (~35% of interstate) of camera coverage. A methodology based on LiDAR survey is also presented to position the cameras on the exact geographic coordinates of the incident.

Statewide ITS camera on interstates

 

Safety service patrol vehicle on scene near I-65 S MM 108.9 automatically captured by the nearest camera

A new performance metric on verification time (TEYE) is proposed to be integrated into the FHWA TIM event sequence that captures the time it takes for TMC operators to have the first visual on roadside cameras. Performance metrics that summarize spatial camera coverage and image quality found that nearly 35% of the interstates in Indiana have sufficient camera coverage. Early results from safety service patrol telematics data showed that this technology can reduce incident verification time by 70%.

For more information, see the full Technical Report:

Mathew, J. K., Malackowski, H., Koshan, Y., Gartner, C., Desai, J., Li, H., Cox, E., Habib, A., & Bullock, D. M. (2024). Development of latitude/longitude (and route/milepost) model for positioning traffic management cameras (Joint Transportation Research Program Publication No. FHWA/IN/JTRP-2024/03). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University. https://doi.org/10.5703/1288284317720