Increasing congestion on many Australian and New Zealand freeway networks has led to an increased level of interest in the use of freeway management systems (FMS) in order to improve the utilisation of the freeway network. Automatic freeway incident detection (AFID) systems have the potential to deal with non-recurrent congestion by providing earlier feedback to road managers as well as road users. This report provides a detailed review of technologies for vehicle detection, algorithms for AFID and local practices for freeway incident detection. Incident data from Melbourne freeways were successfully used to confirm the choice of incident detection parameters and performance indicators suitable for an AFID system. This report provides guidelines on the choice of vehicle detectors for freeway management, choice of incident parameters, incident performance indicators and their target values, and the selection of AFID algorithms. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting