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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/J500173/1
Title: Wirelessly gathered road vehicle data for traffic control and other applications.
Principal Investigator: Waterson, Dr BJ
Other Investigators:
Wilson, Professor RE Cherrett, Professor T
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Dr S Box
Project Partners:
Department: Faculty of Engineering & the Environment
Organisation: University of Southampton
Scheme: Technology Programme
Starts: 06 June 2011 Ends: 05 December 2012 Value (£): 172,835
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Information & Knowledge Mgmt Transport Ops & Management
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Transport Systems and Vehicles
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
08 Mar 2011 Nano Grand Challenges Phase II Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
It is understood that wireless communication links between road vehicles and infrastructure will be commonplace in the near future. Such links will lead to the availability of a rich new data source potentially containing real time position and speed data (among others) for some or all vehicles on the UK road network. This is known as localization probe data. The availability of this new data source creates business opportunities to develop tools that manage, store, and process these data for applications. An application of particular interest is Urban Traffic Control (UTC). There are a large number of existing data sources that currently provide useful information for UTC. These include direct measurement data, for example from inductive loops and cameras. They also include data that are informative of the expected levels of demand on the system, for example shipping timetables and event schedules. Currently these data sources are not fully unified and it would be desirable to fuse them. Similarly there are data sources, such as smart phone data, that are present but not fully utilised. The aim in exploiting these multiple data sources is to create a single coherent image of the state of the network. It is important that the new localization probe data does not become an additional disparate source of information, but is combined with already available data sources to generate an image of the network state that can be employed in UTC and other applications. The technical objective of this research project is to create a city centre sized microscopic traffic simulation model, where wireless communication between vehicles and infrastructure is modelled and thus simulated localization probe data are generated. Simulated data from existing sources will also be generated and validated against the available historical data. The simulated data will then be used in prototype model Urban Traffic Control systems that will implement control directly in the simulation. Thus the simulator becomes a proving ground for the development of techniques to process and analyse these data and for novel traffic control methods using these data. Also the simulator will be used to analyse the efficacy of prototype traffic control systems and compare them with existing methods, thus enabling a quantitative analysis of the economic value of this new data source and these new techniques in the transport sector. An important aspect of the solution to the UTC problem is to develop software tools for processing, refining and visualizing the data to present human traffic controllers with a single coherent image of the state of the network. The software development aspect of the project will be extended to develop some general processing and visualisation tools for applications other than UTC. These applications would include research applications where, for example the data could be used for pollution monitoring. They would also include legislative monitoring where key performance indicators can be extracted from the data. They would also include value added services to the general public, such as real-time travel information. The principal outputs of the project will be new methods and techniques for collecting and processing new localization

Proposal original proforma document

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data, fusing it with existing data and employing it in UTC. This will include patents for both data management technologies and new UTC technologies. Also output will be software tools to analyse process and visualise these data. Because there is a market for these data in areas other than signal control, general software for data refinement and visualisation will also be produced for marketing to third parties.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
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Summary
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Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.soton.ac.uk