Many vendors offer roadway sensors either embedded in pavements, non-intrusively within the road, or attached to infrastructure. These sensors gather data and/or communicate with vehicles to aid roadway operations. This effort seeks to understand existing and innovative types of commercially available intrusive and non-intrusive roadway sensors with an analysis of the potential applications, relevance, and drawbacks of each type. This effort considers sensors to be innovative if they are not widely used, either by being new to the transportation sector or not widely used by transportation agencies. Sensors of interest are examined in greater detail, such as identifying the ability of pavement to hold up structurally, operations and maintenance considerations, and placement of the sensors.
This Phase 2 ENTERPRISE Pooled Fund Study project builds on prior work conducted by selecting and advancing a managed set of sensor options from the Phase 1 effort. Specifically, this effort identifies possible test bed approaches that one or more agencies may test in a future test bed environment, with recommendations for common attributes of deployment (e.g., placement, security, communications) such that the individual deployments all contribute to a universal virtual test bed. Additionally, this effort develops a high-level systems engineering approach that defines the needs addressed, operational concepts, and preliminary requirements, with a goal of having a scientific-based description of the use of the roadway sensors identified in Phase 1 that can be presented internally by member agencies within their organization.