SPUTERS - Rationale and Infrasturcture

The road instrumentation that is currently used for data collection purposes is inadequate and not in pace with practical solutions that can be provided with advances in intelligent transportation systems. The data-collection devices are limited to measurements such as volume, speed and occupancy. In this product specification, titled SPUTERS, we present an easily deployable, low-cost data collection and surveillance system that can be used for measuring detailed traffic data such as individual speeds, density, and other factors under normal operating conditions and act as an incident-response system in case of an emergency.  This system is a collection of audio and video capturing devices, traffic sensors, and secure wireless communication networks for data transmission.  We present a surveillance system with which users can retrieve live and pre-recorded surveillance video from any roadway locations under surveillance through wire/wireless web or remote display devices.

Two key high-level requirements underlying the conceptualization of the surveillance system are the following: 

1. To provide low-cost innovative solutions for identifying causes of crashes in crash-prone locations and developing an accident avoidance/prevention system
2. To coordinate emergency response in the case of an incident.

The first requirement can be achieved by recording accidents and extracting traffic detector measurements that then can be used for understanding crash dynamics and their causes. Traffic measurements such as traffic intensity and quality of flow can be derived from the raw data and analyzed in order to determine crash-prone condition patterns. The second requirement necessitates a coordinated effort between many cooperating parties, including but not limited to the following: police, fire and ambulance crews, emergency room staff, wrecker services, and traffic management center (TMC) personnel.

Key Milestones and Project Plan

Incident Management - Emergency Response

Incident management encompasses coordinating the following types of services: emergency response, traffic control, and post-incident cleanup. Currently, a grid of handheld audio devices aids such efforts, rarely supplemented by advanced camera assemblies. Due to the fact that the visual dimension significantly contributes to situational awareness for incident management over its auditory counterpart, we propose a system of appropriately placed cameras transmitting data about unravelling events associated with incidents to traffic management and emergency response centers; we refer to this system as SPUTERS.  SPUTERS is a bimodal system in that it can also be used for traffic surveillance under incident-free operating conditions.

The different views of an incident, as provided by the cameras and other sources, must be protected from unauthorized disclosure as dictated by security and privacy laws. Although security mechanisms cannot be devised to guarantee the protection of privacy, they can be used to control access by the people who use the information systems in which privacy-related information resides.We propose that the role-based access control (RBAC) model be used for this purpose because most personnel at traffic management and incident response centers play distinct roles: the information that they need to access in order to perform the duties for these roles can be specified and enforced via security policy and automated RBAC mechanisms, respectively.  Data gathered by SPUTERS can be used to undertake proactive measures that are based on information extracted from conventional sensors such as loops and new additions such as live feed captured using audio and video recording devices. It is low cost and implementable in both urban and rural settings. This product specification capitalizes on earlier projects with the introduction of new wireless-detection and surveillance-device technology.