scholarly journals Deep Learning for image based weather estimation: a focus on the snow

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Lepetit ◽  
Cécile Mallet ◽  
laurent Barthes
Keyword(s):  
Snow Depth ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Snow Accumulation ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Snow Layer ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The One

<p>The road traffic is highly sensitive to weather conditions. Accumulation of snow on the road can cause important safety problems. But road conditions monitoring is as hard as critical: in mid-latitude countries, on the one hand, the spatial variability of snowfall is high and on the other hand, accurate characterization of snow accumulation mainly relies on costly sensors.</p><p>In recent decades, webcams have become ubiquitous along the road network. The quality of these webcams is variable but even low-resolution images capture information about the extent and the thickness of the snow layer. Their images are also currently used by forecasters to refine their analysis. The automatic extraction of relevant meteorological information is hence very useful.</p><p>Recently, generic and efficient computer vision methods have emerged. Their application to image-based weather estimation has become an attractive field of research. However, the scope of existing work is generally limited to high-resolution images from one or a few cameras.</p><p>In this study, we show that for a moderate effort of labelling, recent Machine Learning approaches allow us to predict quantitative indices of the snow depth for a large variety of webcam settings and illumination.</p><p>Our approach is based on two datasets. The smallest one contains about 2.000 images coming from ten webcams that were set up near sensors devoted to snow depth measurements.</p><p>The largest one contains 20,000 images coming from 200 cameras of the AMOS dataset. Meteorological standard rules of human observation and the specifics of the webcams have been taken into account to manually label each image. These labels are not only about the thickness and the extent of the snow layer but also describe the precipitation (rain or snow, presence of streaks), the optical range and the foreground noise. Both datasets contain night images (45%) and at least 15% of images corrupted by foreground noise (filth, droplets, and snowflakes on the lens).</p><p> </p><p>The labels of the AMOS subset allowed us to train ranking models for snow depth and visibility using a multi-task setting. The models are then calibrated on the smallest dataset. We tested several versions, built from pre-trained CNNs (ResNet152, DenseNet161, and VGG16).</p><p>Results are promising with up to 85% accuracy for comparison tasks, but a 10% decrease can be observed when the test webcams have not been used during the training phase.</p><p>A case study based on a widespread snow event over the French territory will be presented. We will show the potential of our method through a comparison with operational model forecasts.</p>

scholarly journals Adhesion of car tires to the road surface during reconstruction of road accidents

2020 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 03022
Author(s):  
Stanislav Evtukov ◽  
Egor Golov
Keyword(s):  
Road Traffic ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Road Surface ◽  
Road Accidents ◽  
The Road ◽  
Use Values ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Impact

Road and weather conditions have a significant impact on the occurrence of road accidents and their development as events. According to these circumstances, the system “Driver – Car – Road – Environment” identifies certain types of expertise that are engaged in determining the presence and magnitude of the parameters of the road environment that affect the development of the road transport situation. When conducting relevant investigations, the experts calculate the speed and length of the stopping distance of the vehicle, using coefficients that determine the impact of road conditions on the road traffic situation under study. One of these important indicators is the coefficient of adhesion of car tires to the road surface. Due to the lack of technical capability to experimentally determine the coefficient of adhesion at the place of an accident, many experts are forced to use values from the reference literature. This study is devoted to checking the agreement of reference values of this indicator with actual values that correspond to the conditions of driving on Russian roads. To solve this problem, full-scale measurements were made of the coefficient of adhesion of tires with a coating on more than 2000 km of roads in different regions of Russia (with different climatic and topographic conditions) and the results of field research were analyzed.

Police Academy in Szczytno, Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-283
Author(s):  
Paweł Musiał
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Accidents ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Police Academy ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Face ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Bad Weather ◽  
Modern Technologies

Traffic accidents are a very common cause of death or disability in people. They usually involve users of various vehicles on the road or pedestrians. They are also among the main problems of public health in Poland. Accidents cause many human tragedies every year. Every day, many people die on Polish roads for many different reasons. The motorcycle season tends to change its time-frame from year to year, taking the form of a year-round. Recklessness, non-compliance with road rules, excessive speed, bad weather conditions and mistakes made by car drivers cause many traffic accidents that involve motorcyclists. They result in severe multi-organ trauma or instant death of the victims. Modern technologies designed to improve the safety of motorcycles as well as the protections used in helmets and protective clothing are helpless in the face of traffic accident mechanisms. The author analyzed the data obtained from the Police Headquarters Road Traffic Department, showing the number of road incidents involving motorcyclists in 2019. The material shows the scale of accidents broken down into causes, number of road incidents in individual months and age of the perpetrators. The references to data from previous years show the problem of accidents on Polish roads and the position of Poland in the European statistics as a country with a high percentage of fatalities in traffic accidents.

scholarly journals The use of simulator studies to assess the impact of ITS services on road users behaviour

2018 ◽  
Vol 231 ◽  
pp. 02009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Pędzierska ◽  
Tomasz Kamiński
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Safety ◽  
Driving Simulator ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
The Road ◽  
Traffic Efficiency ◽  
Road Traffic Safety ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Impact

The subject of this publication is the use of top-of-the-range driving simulators to study the impact of ITS services on the road safety. The aim of the article is to describe the assumptions of simulation studies carried out as part of the RID 4D project and to present the method of building research scenarios. The article discusses the catalogue of ITS services of the greatest importance to the Road Traffic Safety and traffic efficiency developed under the project. Then, services from the catalogue were specified, which were tested on the driving simulator of the Motor Transport Institute. The tests included sections of a dual-lane expressway. As a result of the work, four scenarios were created containing various dangerous events and variable message boards informing drivers about the danger and/or limiting the permitted speed. During the simulation, a set of several dozen parameters related to vehicle motion was recorded, in particular the distance to the vehicle ahead, time to collision with another vehicle or object on the road, speed, intensity of braking and acceleration. The tests were performed for good and bad weather conditions on a 60-person study group. The division into age groups 18-24, 25-50 and above 50 years was applied. The research showed a difference in the way drivers of static signs and speed limits on the variable message signs affect drivers. For variable messages signs, there was a greater decrease in speed than in the case of static signs.

scholarly journals Analytical model assessing the effect of increased traffic flow intensities on the road administration, maintenance and lifetime

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 359-366
Author(s):  
Jiří Hanzl
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Flow ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Road Maintenance ◽  
Maintenance And Repair ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The One ◽  
Final Calculation

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to introduce the reader to the construction of an analytical model assessing the effect of increased traffic intensities on extraordinary road traffic events on the amount of expenditures that the road administrators are forced to spend on the extra maintenance and reshaping these alternative diversion routes into the initial technical conditions. The computational mechanism of this model is based on the one hand on parameters of diversion routes temporarily transferring increased traffic intensities (e.g. motorway traffic at closure), on the other hand on approved cost databases for the assessment of road constructions and other regulations concerning the design of road maintenance and repair. In the final part of the paper the applicability of this model in practice is assessed and some negatives that are not included in the final calculation when determining the total costs of the road administrator are mentioned.

A Groundwork Based Novel Routing Protocol for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Amolkirat Singh ◽  
Guneet Saini
Keyword(s):  
Routing Protocol ◽  
Packet Loss ◽  
Secure Communication ◽  
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Unexpected Events ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road

Many people lose their life and/or are injured due to accidents or unexpected events taking place on road networks. Besides traffic jams, these accidents generate a tremendous waste of time and fuel. Undoubtedly, if the vehicles are provided with timely and dynamic information related to road traffic conditions, any unexpected events or accidents, the safety and efficiency of the transportation system with respect to time, distance, fuel consumption and environmentally destructive emissions can be improved. In the field of computer and information science, Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) have recently emerged as an effective tool for improving road safety through propagation of warning messages among the vehicles in the network about potential obstacles on the road ahead. VANET is a research area which is in more demand among the researchers, the automobile industries and scientists to discover about the loopholes and advantages of the vehicular networks so that efficient routing algorithms can be developed which can provide reliable and secure communication among the mobile nodes.In this paper, we propose a Groundwork Based Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol (GAODV) focus on how the Road Side Units (RSU’s) utilized in the architecture plays an important role for making the communication reliable. In the interval of finding the suitable path from source to destination the packet loss may occur and the delay also is counted if the required packet does not reach the specified destination on time. So to overcome delay, packet loss and to increase throughput GAODV approach is followed. The performance parameters in the GAODV comes out to be much better than computed in the traditional approach.

scholarly journals Fail to Yield? An Analysis of Ambulance Crashes in Taiwan

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1566
Author(s):  
Rong-Chang Jou ◽  
Ming-Che Chao
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Medical Emergency ◽  
Transportation Safety ◽  
Emergency Vehicle ◽  
The Road ◽  
Mnl Model ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Crash Injuries ◽  
The Relationship

Introduction—Medical emergency vehicles help patients get to the hospital quickly. However, there were more and more ambulance crashes on the road in Taiwan during the last decade. This study investigated the characteristics of medical emergency vehicle crashes in Taiwan from January 2003 to December 2016. Methods—The ordered logit (OL) model, multinominal logit (MNL) model, and partial proportional odds (PPO) model were applied to investigate the relationship between the severity of ambulance crash injuries and its risk factors. Results—We found the various factors have different effects on the overall severity of ambulance crashes, such as ambulance drivers’ characteristics and road and weather conditions. When another car was involved in ambulance crashes, there was a disproportionate effect on the different overall severity, as found by the PPO model. Conclusions—The results showed that male ambulance drivers and car drivers who failed to yield to an ambulance had a higher risk of severe injury from ambulance crashes. Ambulance crashes are an emerging issue and need further policies and public education regarding Taiwan’s ambulance transportation safety.

Analysis of Vehicle–Pedestrian Interactive Behaviors near Unsignalized Crosswalk

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812199906
Author(s):  
Byeongjoon Noh ◽  
Dongho Ka ◽  
David Lee ◽  
Hwasoo Yeo
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Traffic Accidents ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
The Road ◽  
Video Footage ◽  
Premature Deaths ◽  
Vehicle Velocity ◽  
Behavioral Features ◽  
Velocity Changes ◽  
On The Road

Road traffic accidents are a leading cause of premature deaths and globally pose a severe threat to human lives. In particular, pedestrians crossing the road present a major cause of vehicle–pedestrian accidents in South Korea, but we lack dense behavioral data to understand the risk they face. This paper proposes a new analytical system for potential pedestrian risk scenes based on video footage obtained by road security cameras already deployed at unsignalized crosswalks. The system can automatically extract the behavioral features of vehicles and pedestrians, affecting the likelihood of potentially dangerous situations after detecting them in individual objects. With these features, we can analyze the movement patterns of vehicles and pedestrians at individual sites, and understand where potential traffic risk scenes occur frequently. Experiments were conducted on four selected behavioral features: vehicle velocity, pedestrian position, vehicle–pedestrian distance, and vehicle–crosswalk distance. Then, to show how they can be useful for monitoring the traffic behaviors on the road, the features are visualized and interpreted to show how they may or may not contribute to potential pedestrian risks at these crosswalks: (i) by analyzing vehicle velocity changes near the crosswalk when there are no pedestrians present; and (ii) analyzing vehicle velocities by vehicle–pedestrian distances when pedestrians are on the crosswalk. The feasibility of the proposed system is validated by applying the system to multiple unsignalized crosswalks in Osan city, South Korea.

scholarly journals Extracting Road Traffic Volume in the City before and during covid-19 through Video Remote Sensing

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2329
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Macioszek ◽  
Agata Kurek
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Traffic Management ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Traffic Volume ◽  
The Road ◽  
Traffic Characteristics ◽  
Annual Average Daily Traffic ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Continuous, automatic measurements of road traffic volume allow the obtaining of information on daily, weekly or seasonal fluctuations in road traffic volume. They are the basis for calculating the annual average daily traffic volume, obtaining information about the relevant traffic volume, or calculating indicators for converting traffic volume from short-term measurements to average daily traffic volume. The covid-19 pandemic has contributed to extensive social and economic anomalies worldwide. In addition to the health consequences, the impact on travel behavior on the transport network was also sudden, extensive, and unpredictable. Changes in the transport behavior resulted in different values of traffic volume on the road and street network than before. The article presents road traffic volume analysis in the city before and during the restrictions related to covid-19. Selected traffic characteristics were compared for 2019 and 2020. This analysis made it possible to characterize the daily, weekly and annual variability of traffic volume in 2019 and 2020. Moreover, the article attempts to estimate daily traffic patterns at particular stages of the pandemic. These types of patterns were also constructed for the weeks in 2019 corresponding to these stages of the pandemic. Daily traffic volume distributions in 2020 were compared with the corresponding ones in 2019. The obtained results may be useful in terms of planning operational and strategic activities in the field of traffic management in the city and management in subsequent stages of a pandemic or subsequent pandemics.

Mitigation of road traffic crash hazard in Pakistan

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 567-585
Author(s):  
Muhammad Masood Rafi ◽  
Ashar Hashmat Lodi ◽  
Muhammad Arsalan Effendi
Keyword(s):  
Road Traffic ◽  
Evaluation Model ◽  
Road Traffic Crash ◽  
Potential Hazard ◽  
Suggested Model ◽  
Male Population ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The City

Purpose – Road traffic crashes (RTCs) result in creating significant social and economic hazard for affectees, their families and society. The purpose of this paper is to present studies which were conducted to study the patterns of RTCs in Karachi which is a metropolitan city of Pakistan. The studies were conducted on one of the busiest roads in the city named as Shara-e-Faisal. The influence and contribution of different factors in RTCs has been studied and hazardous road sections of Shara-e-Faisal have been identified. Based on the data analysis, an evaluation model has been suggested to reduce the hazard of RTCs on Shara-e-Faisal. The objective of the presented studies is to increase the present level of safety of road travel by reducing crashes on Shara-e-Faisal. Design/methodology/approach – Existing data of RTCs in Karachi have been analysed for the presented studies. For this purpose, Shara-e-Faisal was divided in sections of 1 km length to study the vehicle crash pattern. Location surveys were conducted to record physical conditions of this road. A cluster analysis was carried out to identify hazardous sections of the road. An evaluation model has been suggested in the end to reduce the hazard of RTCs by identifying hazardous road sections of Shara-e-Faisal. Findings – The analysis of the data revealed that the crashes were higher over weekend and on Monday. Male population, particularly young people, and motorcycle riders were the largest affectees of RTCs. In general, more daytime crashes were recorded as compared to nighttime crashes. The crashes in the mid block of the road and those involving rear-end collisions were higher. The hazardous road locations were related to poor road conditions. Statistical analysis indicated that alternate routes were required to reduce the RTC hazard on Shara-e-Faisal. Research limitations/implications – The paper is a small, but an original, contribution to identify a potential hazard which is faced by the community in the city. This is the first attempt (to the best of authors’ knowledge) to address the issue of RTCs in Karachi from an engineering view point. Practical implications – The suggested model can be employed by the authorities as a guideline to mitigate the hazard of road crashes in the country. Originality/value – The paper provides valuable information on the road traffic incidents, their pattern and contributing factors in one of the largest metropolis of Pakistan. The suggested model can become helpful in reducing RTCs in Pakistan.

scholarly journals The system of removing slush in passenger cars - a concept

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 217-220
Author(s):  
Michał Rubach ◽  
Konrad Waluś
Keyword(s):  
Atmospheric Pressure ◽  
Road Safety ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Dew Point ◽  
Passenger Cars ◽  
Dew Point Temperature ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Vehicle Movement ◽  
Temperature Surface

The appearance of slush on the road is determined by the intensity of precipitation, ambient temperature, surface and dew point temperature, atmospheric pressure and road traffic. The condition of slush (mixture of snow, ice, sand and chemicals such as salt) significantly affects the scope of road safety and the acceleration achieved in the driving processes. The agglomeration of slush in the space between the wheel and the wheel arches increases the resistance of the vehicle movement and increases the load on the suspension system and the steering. Excess snow and ice increases the risk of damage to these systems and may affect the steering and stability of the vehicle. The process of "deposition" of slush is particularly noticeable in environmental conditions with high humidity, and ambient and surface temperatures are below zero degrees Celsius. The article presents the idea of a system for removing slush from wheelhouse liners.

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