Conference Papers 2006

Seminar
Day 1 (18 Sep 2006), Traffic and Transport Safety, Incidents and Emergencies, 11:00 - 11:00

Status
Accepted, awaiting documents

Authors
Massimo Mancini, Sergio Mitrovich, Gaetano Valenti, ENEA, IT

Short abstract
The aim of this paper is to describe the current development of a DSS to assist traffic operations centre team to effectively and safety manage traffic flow in the event of an incident inside or around a roadway tunnel.

Abstract
The Italian road and motorway network is characterized by a high density of traffic and tunnels, and the number of incident occurring inside them is high. Currently all the main Italian road and motorway companies are involved in the process to improve the tunnel safety levels according to the recent EU directive on minimum safety requirements for tunnels in the Trans-European Road Network.
The SITI project co-financed by the MIUR (Italian Research Ministry) aims to study, develop and demonstrate a set of innovative technologies in order to improve the traffic monitoring process and the safety level inside the road tunnels.
SITI introduces a new approach, the ?Dynamic Tunnel? vision, which considers the tunnel as a whole with the road network before and after the tunnel itself, like a complex system in continuous evolution.
A SITI objective is the implementation of a DSS for the selection and best implementation of traffic management measures to minimize its impacts in terms of formation of traffic queue, delay and additional incidents.
The paper is intended to outline the main functions of a DSS aimed at preventing crisis situations and at making more effective the traffic control operations during the emergency events, both at local and wide area. The DSS is designed to work inside a motorway or an urban area or a long tunnel traffic control centre and to be linked with the existing equipment providing real time data collected from traffic sensors.
The proposed DSS, including a macro and micro traffic simulator, will support on-line and off-line functions for the early incident detection, the determination of the impact area, the formulation and implementation of proper traffic diversion emergency plans based on a set of parameters such as the incident severity level, the estimated duration and the current traffic volumes across the road network.
The DSS will be also interfaced with the local traffic control devices (traffic lights, VMS, etc) and with travel information systems including WEB and mobile phone.