Securing Transportation Systems and Managing Traffic
Automation of the overall transportation system cannot be automated through vehicles only . In fact, other components of the end-to-end transportation system, such as tasks of field support teams, traffic police, road surveyors, and rescue teams, also need to be automated. Smart and reliable drones can help in the automation of these components. Drones have been considered as a novel traffic monitoring technology to collect information about traffic conditions on roads. Compared to the traditional monitoring devices such as loop detectors, surveillance video cameras and microwave sensors, drones are cost-effective, and can monitor large continuous road segments or focus on a specific road segment. Data generated by sensor technologies are somewhat aggregated in nature and hence do not support an effective record of individual vehicle tracks in the traffic stream. This restricts the application of these data in individual driving behavior analysis as well as calibrating and validating simulation models. Moreover, disasters may damage computing, communications infrastructure or power systems. Such failures can result in a complete lack of the ability to control and collect data about the transportation network.