Insights
Highway monitoring glossary
The terms that appear in tenders, specifications and day-to-day control center work, explained in a sentence or two.
- DAI
- Automatic Incident Detection (known internationally as AID). Video analytics that identifies events on the highway, such as stopped vehicles, wrong-way driving, pedestrians, animals, fire and smoke, and generates alerts for the Traffic Operations Center.
- SAT
- Automatic traffic sensor (Sensor Automático de Tráfego), in the terminology of ARTESP and ANTT: equipment that counts and classifies vehicles by lane and records speed. At Omnivias, SAT is the camera-based Traffic Analysis System.
- CFTV-IVA
- Closed-circuit TV monitoring system with intelligent video analytics, specified by ARTESP, the São Paulo state transport regulator, for the state’s concession highways.
- IVA
- Intelligent video analytics: software that interprets images and generates events.
- TOC
- Traffic Operations Center (CCO in Portuguese): where the concessionaire monitors the highway, receives alerts and dispatches crews.
- Right-of-way (faixa de domínio)
- The strip alongside the highway that belongs to the concession, beyond the lanes and the shoulder.
- Classified volumetric counting
- A vehicle count broken down by class, lane, direction and period.
- Inductive loop
- A sensor installed in the pavement that detects the passage of vehicles through changes in the magnetic field.
- V85
- The speed below which 85% of vehicles travel. A reference for discussing speed limits and signage.
- HCM
- Highway Capacity Manual: the reference manual for road capacity and level of service.
- Level of service
- A classification of flow quality, from A (free flow) to F (congested), calculated from parameters such as density and flow rate.
- Density
- The number of vehicles per kilometer of lane at a given moment.
- Headway
- The time interval between two consecutive vehicles passing the same point.
- LPR
- License plate recognition: automatic reading of license plates.
- PTZ and preset
- A camera that pans, tilts and zooms. A preset is a saved camera position.
- Analysis zone
- A region drawn over the image (lane, shoulder, counting line) where a rule applies.
- False alarm and passive event
- A false alarm is an alert with no real incident. A passive event is a real event that requires no intervention.
- Edge inference
- Video processing on servers close to the cameras, which keep working even without the central site.
Start with a pilot on your own cameras
First we assess the cameras the highway already has; then a proof of concept using footage from the road section itself shows the measured result. Depending on the size of the project, the assessment and the proof of concept can be free of charge, and the proof of concept starts running within 10 days of signing the agreement.
Assessment
Resolution, position, coverage, lighting and network of the existing cameras, against what the operation wants to measure and detect.
Proof of concept
SAT and DAI running on footage from the road section itself, measured against the agreed success criteria.
Production
On-premises, cloud or hybrid architecture, control center integration, rules, alerts and reports.
Continuous calibration
Rules and models tuned camera by camera using the real alert history.