Automatic Identification of Roadway Horizontal Alignment Information Using Geographic Information System Data: CurvS Tool

This paper introduces CurvS, a web-based tool for researchers and analysts that automatically extracts, visualizes, and analyzes roadway horizontal alignment information using readily available geographic information system roadway centerline data. The functionalities of CurvS are presented along with a brief background on its methodology. The validation of its estimation results are presented using actual horizontal alignment data from two different roadway types: Route 83, a two-lane two-way rural roadway in New Jersey and I-80, a freeway segment in Nevada. Different metrics are used for validation. These are identification rates of curved and tangent sections, overlap ratio of curved and tangent sections between estimated and actual horizontal alignment data, and percent fit of curve radii. The validation results show that CurvS is able to identify all the curves on these two roadways, and the estimated section lengths are significantly close to the actual alignment data, especially for the I-80 freeway segment, where 90% of curved length and 94% of tangent section length are correctly matched. Even when curves have small central angles, such as the ones in Route 83, CurvS’s estimations covers 71% of curved length and 96% of tangent section length.