The ipems MAP-21 Module

Transcription

1 The ipems MAP-21 Module Producing the information you need from the National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS) January 2015 Innovation for better mobility

2 Use the ipems MAP-21 Module to Meet Federal Reporting Requirements Start with the NPMRDS files on the HERE web portal... Have ipems work for you... To produce the performance information you need. The iperform Division of Iteris is focused on providing tools to help public agencies manage and analyze their transportation system data. Iteris flagship traffic analytics and performance measurement system, ipems, offers a suite of tools for storing, visualizing, and calculating performance information from both vehicle detectors (point-based data) and vehicle probes (link-based data). Since the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) made the National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS) available, Iteris has identified key areas to assist agencies in leveraging the data set to meet performance-based reporting requirements for congestion reduction and system reliability established in the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act. Iteris has developed a MAP-21 Module in ipems specifically for managing the NPMRDS, using the data set to calculate performance measures and monitor NHS performance. With this baseline set of tools ready to use, Iteris is prepared to help your agency accomplish necessary federal performance reporting tasks. What is the NPMRDS? In July 2013, FHWA acquired a national travel time data set from HERE, a Nokia company, to support federal mobility applications. The NPMRDS contains passenger and freight probe-based travel time data for the National Highway System (NHS). Average travel times for road segments called Traffic Message Channel (TMC) links are provided every five minutes. The data set begins from July 2013, with Interstate data going back to October 2011, and is delivered monthly in flat files via a web portal (it is not real-time data). Page 2

3 FHWA provided access to this Big Data set to state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) for their use in performance management and reporting. This data set is an important new resource for agencies as they prepare to meet performance-based MAP-21 requirements. The NPMRDS covers the entire NHS MAP-21 UPDATE The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for System Performance and Freight Performance Measures is expected in February/March of this year. Why Should State DOTs and MPOs Care About the NPMRDS? The NPMRDS is a potentially valuable resource for state DOTs and MPOs for several reasons: The data set is free for all state DOTs and MPOs. The agency simply needs to agree to the terms of the FHWA/HERE data sharing license. This means that meeting MAP-21 requirements may not need to be an expensive endeavor if this data set can be leveraged. The data set covers the entire NHS, including the extended NHS miles added by MAP-21. With this expanded coverage, the NPMRDS may have travel time data for roads where your agency currently has no data. With the forthcoming federal rulemaking on congestion and reliability performance measures on the NHS, the data set could soon become a critical component of your agency s ability to meet the new reporting requirements. The data set includes freight data the travel times in the data set are provided in three classifications: all vehicles, passenger vehicles, and freight trucks. Many states and regions have significant goods movement challenges, but little freight data with which to plan. The NPMRDS can help address that data need. While many state DOTs and MPOs have realized the potential of the NPMRDS, they have also encountered some difficulties in using the data set to its full potential. Challenges Faced in Using the NPMRDS Despite its great potential, using the NPMRDS is easier said than done. Challenges with using the data set include, but are not limited to: It s big: The travel time data are delivered in single monthly files that are so large that they cannot be handled by the typical desktop software that most public agencies use. Handling the files requires knowledge of and access to more advanced database or statistical analysis software. It s based on TMCs: The travel time data must be joined with its metadata to understand where the data belongs on the NHS. The TMC network on which the travel time data are delivered is new to many agencies. To map where each TMC link is on the road network requires staff knowledge and resources and appropriate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. Performing this mapping can be a daunting task for the uninitiated or for the understaffed. Page 3

4 The unmodeled NPMRDS data before processing Iteris processes the unmodeled data to fill in the data holes The ipems MAP-21 Module: Calculates performance measures for internal and external reporting Summarizes complex data into dashboards, plots, tables, and map displays to communicate performance information to stakeholders ranging from executive leadership to the public Empowers agency personnel with the system information needed to implement a performance management approach to investment and policy decision-making It s unmodeled: The NPMRDS only provides travel times on a link if there are actual observed probes during the 5-minute period. There are TMC links where no data are provided for certain periods of the day. In order to produce meaningful performance measures from the NPMRDS, these gaps where no data are provided must be filled in through a data imputation process. This can also be a significant challenge, as developing an imputation process is no small task. It s only travel times: The NPMRDS only provides travel times, not traffic volumes, but many performance measures agencies want and/or need to produce require both travel time and volume data. Combining an agency s volume data with the NPMRDS is also a large task. How Iteris Has Addressed These Challenges Realizing that agencies could be facing one or many of these challenges, Iteris has already done much of the prep work required for using the NPMRDS, and this work has been integrated into the ipems MAP-21 Module. Iteris has been able to leverage the fact that it has a long history of managing and storing agencies large traffic data sets in databases that are easily queried via a web interface. This very set-up is the model on which ipems is based. To help agencies manage this big data set, Iteris provides cloudbased hosting of the NPMRDS data with the database software necessary to store and process the data, and to make data visualizations and performance measures from the data accessible 24/7 through a web interface. To overcome the TMC issue, Iteris has mapped all the TMC links on the NHS to the road network. From day one, Iteris can match your state s or region s data to your road network and display it on a map. If there is a desire to take an additional step of integrating the data into your agency-specific Linear Referencing System, Iteris can also provide assistance with this task. ipems has also long-provided tools for data imputation, and Iteris has extended those tools to fill in the data holes for the time periods and links where there are no observed probes in the NPMRDS. Iteris uses a series of imputation methods to make sure the best available observed data are used to fill in each hole. Iteris has already done this imputation on the previous months of NPMRDS data to make the data set ready for performance measurement calculation. For computing performance measures requiring both travel times/speeds and traffic volumes, Iteris has established tools for integrating traffic volume data with the NPMRDS travel time data, and offers several options for integration. One option is to use the Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) data available through the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) database. Iteris has created hourly volume profiles from the AADT data to pair with hourly roll-ups of the NPMRDS data. Iteris also has the ability to do this integration with any other AADT data or more granular (e.g., hourly) traffic flow data your agency has collected. Page 4

5 The ipems MAP-21 Module The tools available in the ipems MAP-21 Module can significantly help state DOTs and MPOs overcome some of the initial hurdles of accessing and analyzing the NPMRDS. With the ipems MAP-21 Module, agencies can avoid those challenges and move directly to monitoring NHS performance and calculating performance measures from the data. The following pages highlight a number of the ipems MAP-21 Module s unique features. Calculating Performance Measures The ipems MAP-21 Module takes the raw NPMRDS data, performs the necessary data cleaning and imputation, and then calculates performance measures including Congestion (in terms of the percent of time road segments are congested), the Travel Time Index (TTI), and the Planning Time Index (PTI). Folding in the AADT-based hourly volume profiles, the ipems MAP-21 Module can also compute Vehicle Hours of Delay. As seen in the example to the left, users can view a series of dashboards for these performance measures, which compare this month s performance to last month s, and to that of one year ago. The example is showing data from Camden County, New Jersey, for September Considering the upcoming federal rulemaking may set different performance measures for mandatory reporting, Iteris is ready to integrate those performance measures whatever they end up being into the ipems MAP-21 Module. Visualizing the Data The ipems MAP-21 Module is designed to provide a quick and easy glance of how your road network is performing based on the NPMRDS. At the top of the ipems MAP-21 Module s landing page are menus for selecting your region (state and county), data type (All, Freight, or Passenger), and performance measure (Congested %, TTI, PTI, Delay, and an option to view only the Links with Data). Below the menus is a data ribbon displaying aggregated monthly averages of the selected performance measure (in the example, Congested %, as indicated by the blue color). Page 5

6 Visualizing the Data (continued) The ipems MAP-21 Module also offers a map in which users can pan and zoom around their state or region to view performance information related to congestion and reliability. In this example, the map is centered on Chicago, with the NHS data for July 2014 transformed to indicate through a color gradient the percentage of time each road segment is congested (red being greater than 50 percent) on weekdays during the 8 a.m. hour (as indicated by the blue selector bars at the top of the image). There are easy-to-use controls to change the month, day of week, and time of day being displayed. Analyzing Data over Space and Time The ipems MAP-21 Module rolls up the 5-minute raw data to make hourly, daily, monthly, and annual analysis easy. As seen via the map, users can evaluate a month s system performance for the hour of day and day of week of their choice. Beyond the map, a series of plots can be made to understand different trends. For instance, several performance measures can be analyzed by day of week, either across the entire day, or the morning or evening peak hour. The example to the left shows the Planning Time Index for Jefferson Parish in Louisiana for August 2014, by day of week (DOW) during the 5 p.m. evening peak hour. The current month, previous month, and the same month last year are compared. By moving the cursor over the map, a particular day of week is featured (Wednesday is selected in the example). Calculate Travel Time Metrics for a Particular Road Segment Users can also create and save Routes road segments that you define and the ipems MAP-21 Module rolls up the NPMRDS data spatially for easy analysis of these Routes. As shown in the map image to the left, users follow a simple process of clicking in a map-based interface to define where their Route begins and ends. Once a Route is created, travel time information is available through a number of reports that enable users to define a date range and view data either in a time series or aggregated by time of day or day of week. The final image on this page shows a typical time series report in which average travel times for every 5-minute period within the date range are displayed in a plot. The data may also be viewed in tabular form, or exported to text, Excel, or PDF. The Final Result With the new ipems MAP-21 Module, state DOTs and MPOs can use the free NPMRDS to not only meet reporting requirements, but also to better understand roadway performance, enabling more efficient and effective planning and operation of the transportation system. Page 6

7 Company Background Iteris, Inc. is the market leader in providing Traffic Information Management Solutions to the Intelligent Traffic Management Industry. Our decades of expertise in traffic management, along with superior services and patented products help detect, measure, and manage traffic and vehicular performance; minimize traffic congestion; and empower our clients with solutions to better manage their transportation networks. The firm is headquartered in Santa Ana, California with offices nationwide. Iteris offers expertise in: Big Data performance monitoring Traffic data fusion Transit route visualization Probe vehicle data visualization Visual analytics services For more information, please contact: Scott Perley phone Jane Berner phone Iteris staff members are experts in the fields of transportation planning, traffic engineering, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Our knowledge of these practice areas enable us to provide comprehensive services ranging from initial traffic impact studies, transportation modeling, planning, systems engineering, and detailed design, through implementation and performance monitoring. We combine the talents of transportation engineers, systems engineers, system integrators, software engineers, and transportation planners to bring to the industry an unmatched combination of talents and experience. The innovative solutions we develop and apply assist public agencies reduce traffic congestion, enhance transit use, monitor and manage their transportation networks, and provide greater access to reliable traveler information. iperform Division For more than 20 years, Iteris has provided market-leading analytics application services for traffic and weather information systems. Our analytics application solutions provide customers with innovative methods for turning data into actionable information through complex algorithmic processing and state-of-the-art visualization tools, available in both web and mobile environments. Traditionally, transportation system performance and congestion monitoring has been limited to conventional methods, such as using floating car surveys and traffic count data, which provide a limited number of observations. Technological advancements, such as massive traffic data from infrastructure sensors and vehicle probes, have become increasingly available. This new, and rich data has provided a foundation for Big Data analytics as an emerging method of performing state of the system monitoring. Iteris is a trusted leader in the development of Big Data approaches that provide a better understanding of system performance, especially when transitioning regional and county agencies to a more comprehensive monitoring system using commercial speed and transit data. Page 7