Evaluating the Reliability, Coverage, and Added Value of Crowdsourced Traffic Incident Reports from Waze

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2018-12-01
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Chakraborty, Pranamesh
Sharma, Anuj
Gilbert, Stephen
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Sharma, Anuj
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Gilbert, Stephen
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Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering

The Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering seeks to apply knowledge of the laws, forces, and materials of nature to the construction, planning, design, and maintenance of public and private facilities. The Civil Engineering option focuses on transportation systems, bridges, roads, water systems and dams, pollution control, etc. The Construction Engineering option focuses on construction project engineering, design, management, etc.

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The Department of Civil Engineering was founded in 1889. In 1987 it changed its name to the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering. In 2003 it changed its name to the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering.

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1889-present

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  • Department of Civil Engineering (1889-1987)
  • Department of Civil and Construction Engineering (1987-2003)
  • Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering (2003–present)

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Virtual Reality Applications Center
At VRAC, our mission is clear: “To elevate the synergy between humans and complex interdisciplinary systems to unprecedented levels of performance”. Through our exceptional Human Computer Interaction (HCI) graduate program, we nurture the next generation of visionaries and leaders in the field, providing them with a comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationship between humans and technology. This empowers our students to create intuitive and transformative user experiences that bridge the gap between innovation and practical application.
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Psychology
The Department of Psychology may prepare students with a liberal study, or for work in academia or professional education for law or health-services. Graduates will be able to apply the scientific method to human behavior and mental processes, as well as have ample knowledge of psychological theory and method.
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Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering
The Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering teaches the design, analysis, and improvement of the systems and processes in manufacturing, consulting, and service industries by application of the principles of engineering. The Department of General Engineering was formed in 1929. In 1956 its name changed to Department of Industrial Engineering. In 1989 its name changed to the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering.
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Civil, Construction and Environmental EngineeringVirtual Reality Applications CenterPsychologyIndustrial and Manufacturing Systems EngineeringHuman Computer InteractionVirtual Reality Applications Center
Abstract

Traffic managers strive to have the most accurate information on road conditions, normally by using sensors and cameras, to act effectively in response to incidents. The prevalence of crowdsourced traffic information that has become available to traffic managers brings hope and yet raises important questions about the proper strategy for allocating resources to monitoring methods. Although many researchers have indicated the potential value in crowdsourced data, it is crucial to quantitatively explore its validity and coverage as a new source of data. This research studied crowdsourced data from a smartphone navigation application called Waze to identify the characteristics of this social sensor and provide a comparison with some of the common sources of data in traffic management. Moreover, this work quantifies the potential additional coverage that Waze can provide to existing sources of the advanced traffic management system (ATMS). One year of Waze data was compared with the recorded incidents in the Iowa’s ATMS in the same timeframe. Overall, the findings indicated that the crowdsourced data stream from Waze is an invaluable source of information for traffic monitoring with broad coverage (covering 43.2% of ATMS crash and congestion reports), timely reporting (on average 9.8 minutes earlier than a probe-based alternative), and reasonable geographic accuracy. Waze reports currently make significant contributions to incident detection and were found to have potential for further complementing the ATMS coverage of traffic conditions. In addition to these findings, the crowdsourced data evaluation procedure in this work provides researchers with a flexible framework for data evaluation.

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This is a manuscript of an article published as Amin-Naseri, Mostafa, Pranamesh Chakraborty, Anuj Sharma, Stephen B. Gilbert, and Mingyi Hong. "Evaluating the Reliability, Coverage, and Added Value of Crowdsourced Traffic Incident Reports from Waze." Transportation Research Record 2672, no. 43 (2018): 34-43. DOI: 10.1177/0361198118790619. Posted with permission.

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Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2018
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