INSIGHTS
In today’s urban landscape, automobiles play an indispensable role in transporting people and goods. They also cause a variety of problems, ranging from traffic accidents, congestion, environmental pollution and massive consumption of fossil fuels. These are a few of the issues which are becoming serious global problems and require fundamental solutions.
Traffic-monitoring solutions are designed to identify congestion, as well as increase safety on the roads. More interactive services include real-time messages through signage for drivers. Determining objectives is the first step toward building an effective monitoring solution. a&s looks at selection criteria, as well as whether IP and HD surveillance is ready for widespread deployment.
Zoom Through Traffic With Purpose-Built Solutions
Date: 2011/08/25
Source: by a&s International
MEASURING ROI
Capital investment upfront is difficult to justify without some sort of ROI. For the US city of Lancaster, a public monitoring system averaged 836 pieces of video information in a month for 2010, resulting in 15 arrests a month on average. Evidence captured on video saves trial costs, which is roughly $20,000 for each case that goes before a jury, according to the district attorney's office. While the system is not strictly for traffic, it has paid for itself several times over. In Sweden , IBM designed and maintained an automated tolling solution, which employed character recognition and RFID. The system automatically taxed vehicles entering the city center between specific times on weekdays, reducing traffic volume by 25 percent during its trial period for an estimated savings of $1.1 billion. Traffic monitoring can be worth the investment, if carefully designed and implemented.
Traffic monitoring requires thorough planning and carefully considering technical factors. Copying another project's specs without considering site factors will result in missing red-light violations or procuring cameras that cannot perform LPR. Hardware and software considerations come after planning, as users need to take vendor claims with a grain of salt. In the following article, we examine what a traffic-monitoring installation must deliver for effective management and enforcement