摘要: |
The Boston Central Artery/Ted Williams Tunnel project incorporates roadway monitoring and control using extensive traffic management equipment and techniques. The Integrated Project Control System (IPCS) incorporates traffic and tunnel facility data collection, alarm processing, and traffic management software. The software which manages the implementation of traffic incident response strategies has been implemented using a real-time knowledge based expert system. In the expert system, the roadway network and traffic management devices are modeled as objects. These devices include lane use signals, variable message signs, traffic signals, highway advisory radio, variable speed limit signs, and blank-out signs. The expert system can graphically display device networks and response plans to aid in the software development and testing. A set of procedures develops land and tunnel closure strategies based on traffic incident characteristics. These procedures use relations between objects modeling the roadway with its devices and create objects to represent incidents, response plans, closure information, and proposed device states. A set of rules uses objects and their relationships to one another to detect any conflicts in response plans before they are activated to the roadway. The rules have an English-like syntax to aid in explanation, testing, and verification of their operation. This system is integrated with the other traffic management software components which include traffic data collection and incident detection, operator event processing, and device control management. The system uses an SQL compliant database which stores roadway and response plan information. It is integrated with the project Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system which monitors and controls field devices. Because the expert system provides a flexible, graphical, and object oriented development environment, testing and maintenance of the system is greatly reduced compared to structured language coding of these response strategies. This system interacts with the operator user interface to provide a rapid, flexible response to serve motorists on the roadway. |