Treading Data

Understanding the effects of a breakdown on a major throughway as rush-hour approaches is not only important to ensure the safety of those on the road but also vital to the flow of traffic on that throughway and all of the arteries and secondary roads that feed into it.

Consider the recent gasoline tanker crash near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge that caused portions of the highway to melt, and consider the importance of translating the impact of its subsequent collapse to commuters, emergency response crews and public works personnel who may or may not be affected by the situation. Alternatively, understanding traffic congestion surrounding a major sporting event or entertainment venue and the ripple effects across the city or state also are critical to shaping traffic patterns to alleviate stress on the roadways and ensure the efficient flow of people, goods and vehicles.

To generate this type of awareness and understanding, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are utilized to help facilitate a faster and safer trip on metropolitan roadways, state highways and national interstates. The deployment of ITS technologies, including camera networks, sensors and analytics software, all aim to help operations centers manage the safety and efficiency of our nation’s transportation infrastructure.

Operations center staff can easily become overwhelmed with the thousands of events that need to be logged and also maybe investigated on a daily basis—the irony being that all of these tools and technologies are supposed to help minimize the workload. For transportation management organizations to effectively monitor, prevent, detect, deter and respond to traffic situations on public roadways, they need to achieve a centralized bird’s-eye view of the entire transportation system and not become overburdened with managing the underlying technology.

To achieve this centralized view, it is increasingly important to integrate all of the various physical and information technology (IT) security systems—systems that until now have been managed and run in separate silos. All of these solutions—DVRs, NVRs, cameras, sensors, alarms—together provide the transportation management operations center with multiple streams of data that offer situational awareness from a bird’s-eye view of events as they unfold for a more effective response to emergencies, traffic congestion and road work.

Interagency hydra

On the surface, gaining a centralized view of events occurring on the roadways seems an achievable concept, but the application and execution of it is much more complex and demands the ability to collect, analyze and correlate a variety of data formats from a number of different feeds, devices and jurisdictions. The challenges to successfully achieving this overall awareness fall into two distinct but interconnected areas: people challenges related to the interagency organizational chart, and technology challenges related to the technical underpinnings that make a fully integrated view possible.

People challenges

Because of the wide reach of a comprehensive transportation management environment, multiple agencies and departments must be able to work in unison and communicate effectively. Traffic management personnel must be able to interact with emergency response teams, fire and police departments and public works personnel at a moment’s notice in order to help a stranded vehicle in trouble, remove a fallen light pole or prepare for night roadwork repairing the pavement. Instant communication as events occur and situations change and the prioritization of response need to transcend departments to involve the right people at the right time.

Policy and procedures must be in place to help expedite that communication and interagency cooperation. It is vital to understand the chain of command, how and when to escalate matters to higher-level decision makers and when to let events on the highway solve themselves, when adding a formal response will only complicate the situation. Interagency cooperation and communication is the lynchpin to effective traffic management and response to events as they happen.

Technical challenges

To enable interagency communication and to get optimal use of all the technologies already deployed as part of the transportation management infrastructure, organizations face a number of key technology issues that must be addressed:

• Analog-to-digital migration: Organizations have to manage a large—maybe 90%—installed base of analog plus fast-emerging digital solutions;
• Multiple management systems: Every product and system has a proprietary stand-alone management console;
• Data overload: There are too many cameras to monitor and too many data sources;
• Disparate equipment and systems: To date, systems such as surveillance, access control and information security have been built in silos and do not interoperate;
• Mitigation: Forensics only helps “solve the crime”; they do not accomplish the primary mission of protection;
• Legacy equipment and networks: Forklift upgrades are unrealistic and simply are not acceptable;
• Archive and storage: Legacy tape systems are not suitable for fast data retrieval or event correlation; and
• Lack of standards: Control plane systems do not operate on known standards.

In today’s transportation management center, the central challenge becomes the ability to manage a variety of analog and digital systems that can intercommunicate. From there, it is crucial to be able to manage, correlate and analyze the information to drive the right response. It is critical to have a platform that can manage all of this information effectively, help produce decisions quickly and inform and instruct the appropriate agencies and personnel on the course of action.

Transportation-focused organizations are now applying concepts of data analysis and correlation to their operations centers, producing greater insight into what is going on around a facility or transportation system and how best to handle a given situation.

Because of the ever-expanding use of new applications and networks, an ITS alone is no longer enough. Instead, it should be used in combination with a unified management platform that can enhance the overall abilities of the ITS software by tying in the ITS system with other surveillance, IT and sensor technologies so that it does not operate as an island. By correlating the data feeds and alarms from various sources, a physical security information management (PSIM) solution can provide the combination of a centralized view of events occurring on the roads with the context that enables the right response to real traffic and safety events, allowing personnel to disregard false alarms or events not perceived as immediate concerns.

The emergence of PSIM solutions provides great value to today’s transportation management operation by converging video surveillance and other physical security systems with IT security, taking in the enormous load of information and distilling it into pertinent insight. The intelligence gleaned from these solutions enables organizations to significantly improve cross-organization communications and efficiencies while fortifying a comprehensive safety and traffic management response that is in line with interagency policies and procedures.

As new technologies come on to the scene, operations centers need to determine a way to infuse these new technologies into existing infrastructure and ITS applications. A PSIM solution can offer the unified management platform from which to combine the old and the new together under a single management console and user interface.

It is important to understand that a transportation management operations center needs to take into consideration both people and technology issues when evaluating a PSIM solution to help them overcome the data deluge. To ease the difficulties in managing the flood of data produced by the extensive technology infrastructure that monitors and analyzes the highways and thoroughfares in today’s command center, operations center managers should consider the following criteria before selecting a software system:

People-oriented criteria

• Built-in procedure and policy database to enable operators to easily know the standard response to an incident;
• Multiple methods of collaboration to enable operators to share information with others regardless of their method and location, including video conferencing, e-mail, web conferencing, SMS, chat, voice over Internet protocol and radio;
• Use of geographical information systems to present data for personnel, devices, data, events and incidents in an intuitive map interface that enables operators to quickly understand the relationship of objects; and
• Integration with mobile wireless networks to enable the sharing of information including video with field operations.

Technology criteria

• Normalization of device presentation regardless of vendor, protocol or standard;
• Normalization of device control regardless of vendor, protocol or standard;
• Normalization of routing and connectivity of all devices and systems regardless of the type of network they reside on, including IP, ATM, ISDN, Overlay (fiber, serial, coax, etc.);
• Integration and management of analog video without the need to convert in bulk to digital;
• Complex rules and correlation engine that enables policy to be applied to multiple events with the elements of time, location, personnel and “normal” conditions incorporated into the correlation of an event; and
• Integration with video wall that enables customizable display of information for an event.

These criteria are key check-boxes that will not only short-list the software systems an operations center should consider, but also will help avoid many of the pitfalls associated with such a complex, involved endeavor. This type of software system will serve as the glue that connects the center’s video cameras and sensors with its traffic management software and video wall, so it needs to be flexible enough to integrate with existing systems while robust and reliable enough to process the volumes of data produced by those systems.

Only by coordinating and more effectively managing data will transportation management organizations be able to ensure the efficient flow of traffic.