SBIR Phase I: Online Services for Active Traffic Management

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project has the potential to enable an increase in road transportation productivity through improvement in the major components of vehicular traffic operations: measurement data analysis, operations planning and real-time traffic control. It consists of three tasks: 1) creating the facility for building and calibrating dynamical model of the traffic system using historical 2) developing the SaaS (software as a service) system, where road network building, model calibration and simulation resources will be available 24/7 anywhere in the world through a web browser; traffic measurement data and 3) implementing the real-time decision support system that includes processing of real-time data. Today, there is no framework of traffic operations planning and real-time decision support systems, in contrast with long term infrastructure planning, for which the procedures are well established. The goal of Relteq Systems is to create enabling technology for Active Traffic Management and provide real-time decision support infrastructure. The proposed Online Services for Active Traffic Management are new in the field of transportation. If successful, this project will alter the way transportation engineers conceptualize and manage the road transportation system. It will also influence the way control engineers model, calibrate analyze and manage large supervisory control and data acquisition systems. It has potential of creating new technological and business opportunities in the field of Vehicle Infrastructure Integration and traveler information. The studies of particular freeways and city streets, on which transportation agencies and local governments spend millions of dollars annually, will become cheaper while significantly more substantive. The learning curve for traffic modeling and simulation will be reduced; hence, lower will be the cost of training of engineering personnel in transportation agencies and their service providers. The benefit to society is the reduced traffic congestion on roads and, as a result, reduced delay and reduced fuel consumption for travelers that would allow the urban Americans to save time and resources.