LRS Conflation

Objective

Support robust data analytics through conflating targeted traffic operations data to the Iowa DOT linear referencing system.

The Iowa DOT's Linear Referencing System (LRS) provides a uniform network to ensure that any information can be integrated to other data available within the DOT. The RAMS systems contains roadway data but also allows for data to be easily integrated based on where it is located along the roadway.

Current Work Activities

On-going:

• Continue to integrate data within the DOT to the RAMS LRS
• Working on conflating the Inrix "XD" Segments (version 16 and 17) and TMC segments to LRS.

Next Steps:

• Weather Data - Based on completed work (see below), future efforts will include assigning the Iowa DOT-based priority to each route record as well as attempting to eliminate records representing the same physical roadway multiple times, with only the highest priority record retained.

Completed Work

• Weather Data - The Iowa Mesonet has developed a temporal dataset of forecast and actual weather data for one-mile grid across the State of Iowa. Analysis and presentation of these data at the roadway level required integration with the Iowa DOT linear referencing system (LRS). Specifically, each of the approximately 72,000 LRS routes had to be broken (split) at their intersection with any of the nearly 130,000 weather grids and the appropriate LRS-based attributes derived, i.e. route identifier, from measure and to measure. This was accomplished through use of ESRI ArcMap Linear Referencing tools. The resulting route-based dataset, with the corresponding unique weather grid identifier, yielded approximately 350,000 records. The integrated dataset includes route concurrencies. In other words, the same physical roadway may be represented multiple times based on the number of signed routes it carries.
• Developed a python tool which allows students to conflate data to LRS by providing coordinates and will return business data from RAMS (https://github.com/jane212/RAMS_API)