Published by Daniel Stofan on
With emerging automation technologies in traffic data collection industry, I’m often getting a question: “How does the work of traffic surveyors change with automation of traffic data collection?” The short answer is: the process doesn’t change, just the tools we use are advancing. Let’s take a deeper dive into how this supplier-client process will be.
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We are in the middle of the technological transformation and COVID-19 has even heightened the critical need for automation — it accelerates the process of transformation to succeed fast in the new normal. But instead of a disruption, it will be rather a transition of the supplier processes as you know it. This article answers four main questions:
- How traffic surveyors will supply data to their customers?
- How transport authorities and transport planners benefit from better data from surveyors?
- What are the real tangible outcomes for transport planners from this collaboration?
- How to commission the digital traffic collection from your suppliers?
Revolution or a necessary evolution?
In GoodVision, we have developed a revolutionary traffic video analytical platform called Video Insights. However, instead of forcing a revolution in the industry, it is the enabler for the smoother transition from manual tasks, old-school equipment and disconnected collaborating parties, to a more fluent operation, where all parties in the process benefit from the rich and precise traffic data.
Looking at the real-world steps with the collaboration between transport planners and their suppliers — the traffic surveyors, it is currently very manual and disjointed in places that GoodVision is improving and connecting a much smoother collaboration.
How traffic surveyors will supply data to their customers?
It starts with the surveyor and a huge task in not only obtaining a huge amount of data or just a small amount which is collected depending on the X number of method compiled into either an excel sheet with pictures and video files. This can become a project in its self just get the data easily and smoothly to the transport planners. This is where GoodVision comes in to support the surveyor in not only automating the counts with pinpoint accuracy, but helping place and analyses the data within GoodVision and simple sharing the data with a click of a button directly to the clients.
Below is how this process looks now, versus the process when commissioning traditional traffic data collection methods like tubes or human counters:
1. Surveyors perform the fieldwork
Installing the CCTV cameras or placing temporary cameras and capturing the imagery.
2. Surveyors collect the traffic data
MANUAL: Surveyor commissioned the human-counting of the video footage to the third-company, mostly in far-east. Surveyor pays for the counting to third company.
GOODVISION: Surveyors performs the traffic video processing and volumes counting automatically by uploading/connecting the cameras to GoodVision’s platform, which does the job and performs the digital data extraction and counting. Surveyor can pay for traffic data collection in the software platform.
3. Surveyors deliver the results to clients
MANUAL: Once the traffic counts were obtained from the third-company, surveyors deliver the spreadsheets with traffic counts to their customers, including the huge amounts of video footage originally captured.
GOODVISION: Once the traffic data is collected on surveyor’s account in GoodVision Video Insights, surveyor simply shares the whole set of rich data — the “project” to the customer’s account on the same platform — the GoodVision Video Insights, including the video footage transfer.
4. Surveyor charges the client
As you can see, surveyor follows the same procedure when obtaining the traffic data for his client, just the toolset is different. Surveyor’s activities and added value is not limited, but he replaces the manual tasks with automation. Surveyor then charges the client for the full delivery as usual.
GoodVision Video Insights is the first platform of its kind that seamlessly fits into a collaboration between surveyors and modellers and enhances it
How transport authorities and planners benefit from better data from surveyors
The receiving party in this process — the transport planners or local transport authorities benefit from a seamless handover over data. Traffic data received using GoodVision allow for seamless and detailed analysis, digitally. While the surveyor performed the basic analysis, provided the counts and identified the peak hours, transport planners take over the data and continue with the more advanced analyses they need to complete their projects.
They create advance movement scenarios, can review the footage directly from the GoodVision’s platform, can investigate complex traffic behaviour parameters for their traffic models and can transfer the data from Goodvision directly into simulation system such as PTV Vissim as a physical blueprint — see the video below.
Without digitally collected and obtained data, this would be impossible.
Common question: Will you replace my traffic data supplier?
No, GoodVision doesn’t replace the surveyor in this process, it empowers him, increases his productivity, efficiency and enables him to become a modern supplier of the high-quality traffic data to fulfill the ever-growing demand.
What are the real outcomes for transport planners from this collaboration?
With the collected traffic data in place, using GoodVision Video Insights, there is a multitude of opportunities opening for transport planners:
- Automatic generation of the traffic reports — adjusting filters without the need to re-process the survey. Read more about the reports.
- Automatic calculation of traffic parameters like speed, headway times, travel times, delays, occupancy times and saturation flows — saving 99% of time versus conventional methods.
- Automatic detection of events and violations like stopped vehicles, lane changes, tailgating, jaywalkers, red-light runners, U-turns and wrong-ways.
- Automatic enrichment of traffic data with license plate data, including the detailed information taken from vehicle registers (like DVLA).
- Automatic generation of calibrated traffic models for simulation systems VISSIM and AIMSUN and event review directly from the original video files for verification. Saving 95% of time versus conventional methods.
How to request GoodVision’s digital traffic data from your suppliers?
Majority of transport planning companies commission traffic data collection to their suppliers, getting just “1-D” static data — i.e. the traffic counts. As you can see from the process described above, traffic data suppliers can provide the digital data just by moving from old-fashioned methods to methods based on artificial intelligence, like is provided by GoodVision. The collaboration process remains the same.
If you require traffic data which can be further analysed and used directly for traffic simulation, the process is simple:
- Ask your preferred traffic data supplier to provide the data in the GoodVision Video Insights, instead of Excel spreadsheets.
- GoodVision provides free trainings and certifications of your suppliers to work with Video Insights platform.
- If you lack suppliers who are able to make a switch, GoodVision is ready to recommend skilled traffic data suppliers from your area in order to fulfil your project needs.
Conclusion
Switching from manual work to automation is a necessary step for this industry. Will you embrace it or will you block your clients (and yourself) from benefiting from it?
If you feel frustrated or intimidated by all that tech-talk and variety of vendor lock-in single-purpose solutions out there, then GoodVision is the way to go. If you need to process just a few or thousands of hours of traffic videos, Video Insights can handle it. It is built to scale even for your massive projects and to deliver traffic data always in 1 hour. Video Insights is a broad ecosystem of capabilities and a one-stop-shop for all the traffic analytical tasks the transportation industry requires. Our goal is to remove the stress from your traffic jobs with automation and conserve your time for professional tasks!
Join the free trial
Try collecting traffic data from your footage using GoodVision Video Insights today in a free trial at my.goodvisionlive.com.