Principal Investigator(s):
Brian Davis, Associate Dir., Mobility Tech. Lab, Mechanical Engineering
Project summary:
Collecting information about work zones serves a number of safety and operational purposes.
For example, information about active work zones can inform drivers and automated vehicle
systems about the presence and location of work zones. Additionally, historical data may be used
in aggregate to better understand patterns or trends in work zone deployments as it relates to
worker and driver safety. This information can also be correlated with other data sources such as
weather, crash, or traffic data to gain valuable insight into work zone deployment strategies and
performance. Additionally, proposed federal reporting guidelines will begin to require regular
reports summarizing various work zone metrics. This motivates the creation of a system capable
of managing this data so that it is accessible for analysis and reporting.
The goal of this project is to develop a concept of operations for a system capable of aggregating
and storing available data related to work zones, their performance, and their safety to support
data analysis and reporting. This work will include identifying potential users and their needs
which will inform a concept of operations that will describe the system, its functionality, its
users, and any system requirements or design guidelines. Lastly, an initial prototype will be
developed to serve as a demonstration platform and guide future production implementations.
It is anticipated that this work will aid in the collection and analysis of work zone data which will
in turn be used to better support worker and driver safety and work zone performance.