Richland Traffic Operations Center - Maintenance and Construction Management Functionality

Subsystem Description

The Maintenance and Construction Management Subsystem (MCMS) monitors and manages roadway infrastructure construction and maintenance activities. Representing both public agencies and private contractors that provide these functions, this subsystem manages fleets of maintenance, construction, or special service vehicles (e.g., snow and ice control equipment). The subsystem receives a wide range of status information from these vehicles and performs vehicle dispatch, routing, and resource management for the vehicle fleets and associated equipment. The subsystem participates in incident response by deploying maintenance and construction resources to an incident scene, in coordination with other center subsystems. The subsystem manages equipment at the roadside, including environmental sensors and automated systems that monitor and mitigate adverse road and surface weather conditions. The subsystem manages the repair and maintenance of both non-ITS and ITS equipment including the traffic controllers, detectors, dynamic message signs, signals, and other equipment associated with the roadway infrastructure. Additional interfaces to weather information providers (the weather service and surface transportation weather service providers) provide current and forecast weather information that can be fused with other data sources and used to support advanced decision support systems that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of maintenance and construction operations. 

The subsystem remotely monitors and manages ITS capabilities in work zones, gathering, storing, and disseminating work zone information to other systems. It manages traffic in the vicinity of the work zone and advises drivers of work zone status (either directly at the roadside or through an interface with the Information Service Provider or Traffic Management subsystems.) It schedules and manages the location and usage of maintenance assets (such as portable dynamic message signs).  

Construction and maintenance activities are tracked and coordinated with other systems, improving the quality and accuracy of information available regarding closures and other roadway construction and maintenance activities.

Functional Area: MCM Data Collection

Collection and storage of maintenance and construction information. For use by operations personnel or data archives in the region.

Functional Area: MCM Maintenance Decision Support

Maintenance Decision Support Systems recommend courses of action based on current and forecast environmental and road conditions (filtered and fused for specific time horizons) and additional application specific information. Recommendations and dispatch instructions are generated based on this integrated information.

Functional Area: MCM Transportation Operations Data Collection

Collects real-time information on the state of the regional transportation system for operational use by the center. It establishes communications with a regional repository, requests or subscribes to information relevant to the center, and distributes the received information for use.

Functional Area: MCM Vehicle Tracking

Remotely tracks the location of maintenance and construction vehicles and other equipment; presented to the center personnel.

Functional Area: MCM Winter Maintenance Management

Manages winter road maintenance, tracking and controlling snow plow operations, roadway treatment (e.g., salt spraying and other material applications) based on weather information.