Assessing Quality Requirements for Congestion Tail Information - a German Case Study

Many traffic accidents on motorways are caused by rear-end collisions. One measure to prevent such accidents is to inform road travellers about dangerous congestion tails downstream of their route in an accurate and timely manner. This paper presents a research project with the main objective of developing a vision-based reference system, allowing quality measurements of third-party Congestion Tail Information. It compares ground-truth congestions phenomena, as recorded by roadside CCTV systems, with third-party data feeds on congestions tails. Such reference system aims to support public authorities, when assessing and acquiring Congestion Tail data from commercial data providers. The reference system was applied in a field test along a German motorway. Based on the findings, minimum quality and service levels to be met by potential data providers were suggested to meet demands of interoperable data environments and end-user expectations.