A highway supervisory and control system is required to cover a large number of road facilities in a wide geographical area, with a small number of operators. In this system, operators have to ensure safety, detect any state of emergency in its early stage, and apply appropriate operations to handle it. To support operators in normal and emergency situations, the authors are developing a multimedia-based operator support system. This system can provide operators with a digital road map database, three dimensional computer graphics (3D-CG) of road facilities, and a video database storing pictures from TV cameras installed along the highway. The authors have developed a prototype system of a multimedia-based operator support system. The features of the system are (a) wide area monitoring using a digital road map; (b) realtime walkthrough and interactive information retrieval using hyperlink in 3D-CG of highway facilities; (c) immediate playback of events such as traffic accidents and tunnel fires using a video database based on MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) standard; and (d) support for identification of the position of tunnel fires. For the covering abstract see ITRD E116488.
Abstract