Advancing transportation data systems for timely information delivery and improved parameter estimation

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Highway agencies and transportation organizations (e.g., regional and metropolitan planning offices) in Canada and elsewhere invest a significant portion of their budgets and manpower for collecting various data through traffic monitoring and travel survey campaigns. The data obtained are widely used in transportation planning, infrastructure design, operation analysis, traffic controls and business development. The quality of the derived information and estimated parameters is critical for wise decision-making in all of the above-noted areas.The proposed research involves studies aimed at improving the procedures of data collection and parameter estimation with advanced technologies and computing techniques. The proposed studies include developing a modern geographic information systems/remote sensing (GIS/RS) system to efficiently and timely support various tasks and decision-making in transportation; using advanced scientific and computing techniques to estimate traffic parameters; examining estimation accuracy of missing data resulting from the procedures used by highway agencies with simulation techniques; and coupling data from different sources for more accurate travel behavior modeling. Through these studies, the following questions regarding current systems can be answered and more cost-effective systems can be developed: How can the latest GIS/RS technologies be best used in data collection and transportation decision-making? How can more accurate procedures be developed to handle the missing data frequently encountered in these systems? Can advanced techniques be used to estimate traffic parameters more accurately? Can more accurate parameters be derived by using data from different sources and advanced techniques? By using advanced techniques, can less data be used than traditionally specified to obtain parameters with similar accuracy?