Data Archiving

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) place a tremendous focus on ‘real-time’ data. The benefits and uses of ITS data go beyond real-time traffic and incident management.  Historical ITS data provides a wealth of information that is valuable for performance monitoring, analysis, short and long-term planning, and other uses.

AZTech™ partners, including the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) and the Maricopa County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), have been archiving data generated by their ITS programs for several years, but to date, these have been separate archival databases.  Continued emphasis on regional transportation operations has inspired MCDOT to take the lead in developing a Regional Archived Data System (RADS) that consolidates ITS information from systems throughout the Valley, stores it in a centralized archived data server, and makes it available for a variety of stakeholders via a web interface.

The challenges for the RADS include:

• Bringing together a wide range of data from disparate sources and accommodating a variety of data formats;
• Providing usable information for near-real-time as well as forecasting functions; and
• Providing data that is easily accessible and understandable for a variety of users, including operating agencies, research and planning, and the general public.

The RADS is populated with dynamic system-generated data, as well as static data that is manually entered or uploaded.  Through the AZTech™ Server, the RADS collects and stores data from the various systems in Maricopa County, including:

• The ADOT Freeway Management System (FMS) traffic volumes and speeds;
• ADOT Highway Condition Reporting System (HCRS) road conditions, closures and incidents;
• The MCDOT AZTech™ SMART Corridor traffic volumes; and
• The City of Phoenix Fire Department 911 response center’s Computer-Aided-Dispatch (CAD) incidents and responses.

Future data sources that will be assimilated into the RADS as they become available include:

• Transit operations data;
• Expanded multimodal data;
• Commercial vehicle data;
• Parking and event information;
• Weather and pavement conditions;
• Accident and incident archive (ALISS); and
• Other data sources.

In addition to archiving data from disparate sources, RADS performs extensive validation, interpolation and fusion of this data.  For example, ADOT FMS traffic volumes and speeds are aggregated to five-minute and hourly-summaries.  These are then downloaded by ADOT Transportation Planners in preparation of their annual traffic counts.  Furthermore, freeway speeds are used by RADS to render travel times over numerous corridors.  This travel time information is then disseminated to numerous consumers, including:

• Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport Rental Car Center (RCC) Display Monitors that show freeway incidents and travel times from the RCC to various destinations throughout the Phoenix Metropolitan area.  This innovative project received the ITS America 2007 Best of ITS Award for Best New Product, Service or Application;
• ADOT’s Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS) website, www.az511.com, which receives millions of hits per month;
• ADOT’s 511 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system which provides ITS information via telephone