The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has begun the installation of a new surveillance system at Toll plazas in the country to monitor traffic in real time. A part of its ongoing Traffic Incident Management System (TIMS) or Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) project, the NHAI will install the new mechanism at 10 national highway Toll complexes and later extend the number to 200, and eventually to all Toll booths in India. The project is slated for completion within six months of initiation.

The surveillance system – equipped with low-latency Internet Protocol (IP) cameras and advanced imaging technology – will produce simulated 3D maps of the flux of traffic at Toll gantries and relay it to a central command and control centre in the Regional Office (RO) through a secure LAN connection. The data will then be used for deploying the necessary action in case of an incident, such as traffic congestion. The surveillance facility will function 24X7. The National Highways Authority of India has already provided all the related ROs with high-speed Internet connectivity (100 mbps) to make the transition seamless.

Once operational, the high-resolution IP cameras will relay time-stamped photographs to the NHAI’s and the RO’s command centre once every 30 minutes. When the Toll lane begins congesting and the traffic elongates beyond the mandated limit, the camera will automatically switch to Video, and start live-streaming the data and sending it to the centres as alerts. If the traffic doesn’t decongest within half an hour of the alert, the system will send distress signals to the RO and later to the NHAI command centre for dispatching the relevant unit for mitigation.

Project Origins
The NHAI had initiated the TIMS or ATMS undertaking to execute, in part, the Government of India’s proposal to modernise Indian National Highways through technology. The new framework – a sub-domain of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) – integrates equipment such as surveillance cameras and speed sensors, installed at various points along the road, with databases primarily to improve, ease, and organise the flow of traffic.
The TIMS or ATMS includes real-time traffic monitoring, traffic camera monitoring and control, traffic signal monitoring and control, active traffic management, arterial management, road weather information system, and many others. The system gathers real-time information from the equipment and software, and relays it to a command centre for integration and processing. The processed data is then used for providing digital or physical services such as incident management, traffic routing, traffic-jam notifications, etc.

The NHAI also is installing Incident Management System (IMS) – a core function of the TIMS. The IMS ingests data on incidents such as grid locks and accidents from the software and tech in the system, and alerts the command and control station to launch related facilities, which can be ambulances, cranes, GPS-monitored patrol vehicles, tow-away vehicles, personnel, and others. With the IMS, it would be possible for authorities to deploy help within 15 minutes of the incident.

The introduction of the new surveillance cameras will enhance India’s TIMS and improve road safety by providing live data and sending alerts on abnormal road and weather conditions. Once in operation, the new camera system will give command centres superior control over highways and round-the-clock access to live feeds of highways and, with further integration of other technologies such as drones, live data on the entire stretch of the highway.


For more details visit : http://www.nhai.gov.in/