Maintaining Iowa's Secondary Road Environment, HR-289, 1989

The Iowa counties have been successful in maintaining a good roadway environment on our 90,000 mile secondary road system. However, county highway personnel must remain vigilant in detecting, discovering and correcting potential problems if our roads are to remain so. This presentation was developed for those county personnel who work and travel on secondary roads. The presentation discusses things county personnel can look for during their daily operations which could possibly create a potential problem. If these situations are uncovered and corrected in a timely manner, our secondary road system will be maintained in an appropriate manner.

Road environment modeling using robust perspective analysis and recursive Bayesian segmentation

Recently, vision-based advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) have received a new increased interest to enhance driving safety. In particular, due to its high performance–cost ratio, mono-camera systems are arising as the main focus of this field of work. In this paper we present a novel on-board road modeling and vehicle detection system, which is a part of the result of the European I-WAY project. The system relies on a robust estimation of the perspective of the scene, which adapts to the dynamics of the vehicle and generates a stabilized rectified image of the road plane. This rectified plane is used by a recursive Bayesian classi- fier, which classifies pixels as belonging to different classes corresponding to the elements of interest of the scenario. This stage works as an intermediate layer that isolates subsequent modules since it absorbs the inherent variability of the scene. The system has been tested on-road, in different scenarios, including varied illumination and adverse weather conditions, and the results have been proved to be remarkable even for such complex scenarios.

Conservação e manutenção nos pavimentos rodoviários e a sua importância

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Área de Especialização em Vias de Comunicação e Transportes

Integration of geometric consistency contributory factors in three-leg junctions collision prediction models of Portuguese two-lane national highways

This paper aims at developing a collision prediction model for three-leg junctions located in national roads (NR) in Northern Portugal. The focus is to identify factors that contribute for collision type crashes in those locations, mainly factors related to road geometric consistency, since literature is scarce on those, and to research the impact of three modeling methods: generalized estimating equations, random-effects negative binomial models and random-parameters negative binomial models, on the factors of those models. The database used included data published between 2008 and 2010 of 177 three-leg junctions. It was split in three groups of contributing factors which were tested sequentially for each of the adopted models: at first only traffic, then, traffic and the geometric characteristics of the junctions within their area of influence; and, lastly, factors which show the difference between the geometric characteristics of the segments boarding the junctionsâ area of influence and the segment included in that area were added. The choice of the best modeling technique was supported by the result of a cross validation made to ascertain the best model for the three sets of researched contributing factors. The models fitted with random-parameters negative binomial models had the best performance in the process. In the best models obtained for every modeling technique, the characteristics of the road environment, including proxy measures for the geometric consistency, along with traffic volume, contribute significantly to the number of collisions. Both the variables concerning junctions and the various national highway segments in their area of influence, as well as variations from those characteristics concerning roadway segments which border the already mentioned area of influence have proven their relevance and, therefore, there is a rightful need to incorporate the effect of geometric consistency in the three-leg junctions safety studies.

Tiehankkeiden suunnittelu - Ympäristön tilan selvitys ja ympäristövaikutusten arviointi

Tämä diplomityö on tehty ohjeeksi väyläsuunnittelijoille, tiehankkeiden suunnittelussa tehtävään ympäristön tilan selvittämiseen sekä ympäristövaikutusten arviointiin.Työn toimeksiantajana on Tieliikelaitoksen Konsultoinnin Suunnittelupalvelut. Tutkimusongelmaa lähestyttiin selvittämällä aikaisemmin suunnittelussa käytettyjätyöskentelytapoja ja -menetelmiä sekä tarkastelemalla aiemmin tehtyjä tiensuunnittelun asiakirjoja. Selvitys keskittyi Tieliikelaitoksen ja sitä edeltäneen Tielaitoksen toimintaan, mutta työssä tarkasteltiin myös muiden asiantuntijoiden laatimia suunnitelmia. Työn lähtökohtana oli laatia ohje, jonkaavulla suunnittelijat voivat tehdä suunnitelmaan kuuluvan ympäristötiedon käsittelyn itsenäisesti. Hankkeissa, joissa näin toimitaan, oletetaan ympäristövaikutusten jäävän melko vähäisiksi eikä niissä vaadita YVA-lain mukaista menettelyä. Laaditun ohjeen myötä eri suunnittelijoiden laatimat tiehankkeiden suunnitelmat yhtenäistyvät ympäristötiedon käsittelyn osalta, sillä aiemmin yhtenäistä käytäntöä ei ole ollut. Suunnitelmien laatu paranee ja ympäristövaikutusten arviointi helpottuu samaan ohjeeseen kootun tiedon avulla. Ohjeen aikaansaaman suunnittelutoiminnan kehittyminen näkyy vasta, kun ohjetta on sovellettukäytännössä hankkeiden suunnitteluun.

A segurança viária e o fator humano : verificação da presença de álcool-direção no sistema de transporte rodoviário do RGS

Esta dissertação examina a situação geral dos Acidentes Viários, no contexto do transporte rodoviário, cujas evidências apontam o Fator Humano como o maior responsável por tais eventos. Entende-se que um maior conhecimento sobre ele possibilitará melhorar a segurança do tráfego e da produção transporte. O estudo pretende destacar a importância das análises relacionadas com a atividade transporte rodoviário, as variações da demanda do sistema de circulação e a tarefa do motorista, sob a ótica da ergonomia. Objetiva ele, também, mostrar importância desses estudos para melhor avaliar as interações dos fatores homemmáquina- ambiente viário e para o desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias e produtos de segurança viária. A revisão bibliográfica dos capítulos iniciais revelam o estado da arte e a importância da segurança de trânsito, em nível internacional. Também revelaram que todas nações sofrem do mesmo mal em suas redes viárias, que varia de acordo com a realidade de cada um. Embora o acidente de trânsito seja um fenômeno comum às nações, aqui eles atingiram a dimensão de flagelo social, em razão da sua severidade; e de calamidade econômica, face a elevação dos custos de produção na atividade do transporte rodoviário. São analisadas as características do fator humano, fundamentais na tarefa de condução, e o respectivo nexo causal das falhas com a gênese do acidente, num sistema multifatorial e interativo. O trabalho fundamenta-se em extensa revisão bibliográfica. O estudo de caso, desenvolvido a partir da revisão dos dados de uma pesquisa anterior, comprova a hipótese que o “álcool-direção”, considerado na literatura como o maior causador de acidentes viários, tem sua presença marcada por elevados índices nas rodovias do RS, contrariando a conclusão da pesquisa anterior. Ao final, também oferece recomendações para o desenvolvimento de ações objetivas para melhorar a segurança viária.

Development of a low-cost mobile mapping system: A South American experience

This paper presents the prototype of a low-cost terrestrial mobile mapping system (MMS) composed of a van, two digital video cameras, two GPS receivers, a notebook computer, and a sound frame synchronisation system. The imaging sensors are mounted as a stereo video camera on top of the vehicle together with the GPS antennae. The GPS receivers and the notebook computer are configured to record data referred to the vehicle position at a planned time interval. This position is subsequently transferred to the road images. This set of equipment and methods provide the opportunity to merge distinct techniques to make topographic maps and also to build georeferenced road image databases. Both vector maps and raster image databases, when integrated appropriately, can give spatial researchers and engineers a new technique whose application may realise better planning and analysis related to the road environment. The experimental results proved that the MMS developed at the São Paulo State University is an effective approach to inspecting road pavements, to map road marks and traffic signs, electric power poles, telephone booths, drain pipes, and many other applications important to people's safety and welfare. A small number of wad images have already been captured by the prototype as a consequence of its application in distinct projects. An efficient organisation of those images and the prompt access to them justify the need for building a georeferenced image database. By expanding it, both at the hardware and software levels, it is possible for engineers to analyse the entire road environment on their office computers.

Desenvolvimento de um computador de bordo para veículo Baja-SAE

The objective of this paper is show the development of an Eletronic Control Unit (ECU) for Baja-SAE vehicles from its requirements to final implementation. An ECU for Baja-SAE vehicles is made of electric and electronic circuits (appropriated to the hostile situations of an off-road competition) able to make important measurements for the running or stand-by vehicle performance. For this development, some concepts were studied: embedded electronics concepts (mainly microcontrollers and data acquisition circuits) and sensoring. Both the studies were made considering the off-road environment. After these initial studies, the elaboration of the basics hardware and software (under simulations) has begun, and this elaboration objectives maximum performance and low implementation cost. After the theorical studies, basic definition of the hardware and software’s architectures and simulations, the printed circuit boards (PCB) were made, as exhaustive tests in these boards for debugging and verify if the boards work well. Once the system was tested in the university, it ran into a regional Southeast competition in 2010, that definitely proved the efficiency of the whole system

Cooperative ITS communications architecture: the FOTsis project approach and beyond

With the continuous development in the fields of sensors, advanced data processing and communications, road transport oriented intelligent applications and services have reached a significant maturity and complexity. Cooperative ITS services, based on the idea of sharing accurate information among road entities, are currently being tested on a large scale by different initiatives. The field operational test (FOTsis) project contributes to the deployment environment with services that involve a significant number of entities out of the vehicle. This made necessary the specification of an architecture which, based on the ISO ITS station reference architecture for communications, could support the requirements of the services proposed in the project. During the project, internal implementation tests and external interoperability tests have resulted in the validation of the proposed architecture. At the same time, these tests have had as a result the awareness of areas in which the FOTsis architecture could be completed, mainly to take full advantage of all the emerging and foreseeable data sources which may be relevant in the road environment. In this study, the authors will outline an approach that, based on the current cooperative ITS architecture and the SmartCities and Internet Of Things (IoT) architectures, can provide a common convergence platform to maximise the information available for ITS purposes.

Safety aspects of roadside cross-section design. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Office of Research and Development, Washington, D.C.

Crash tests of Minnesota mailbox supports. Final report.

Minnesota Department of Transportation, St. Paul

Scenic byways: states' use of geometric design standards.

Mode of access: Internet.

Hazardous effects of highway features and roadside objects. Volume 1: literature review and methodology. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.

Hazardous effects of highway features and roadside objects. Volume 2: findings. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.

Highway-vehicle-object simulation model - 1976. Volume 2: programmers manual. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.