Summary

Vehicle counts and traffic statistics are essential for planning and monitoring of road traffic. Today, such counts are primarily made using inroad installations (such as pressure sensors, video cameras or induction loops) for counting vehicles. Such devices typically produce relatively precise counts of the number (and possibly type) of vehicles passing a certain point in the road network over time.

Installing and operating such inroad counting equipment is expensive and complicated. This limits the number of counting stations; typically they are concentrated on major roads. This severely limits the spatial coverage of vehicle counts. Satellite imagery could provide a very interesting complement to these point-based counts. If vehicles could be detected with an acceptable precision in high-resolution satellite imagery, then snapshots could be generated of the traffic situation in entire cities.

Such snapshots could potentially provide information about the distribution of vehicles in the entire city road network, not only limited to major roads. It could also provide information about parked cars, information that cannot be obtained using inroad counting equipment.

Project goals

The objective of the Road Traffic Snapshot (RTS) project is to demonstrate a road traffic statistics service based on high-resolution optical satellite imagery. The service is to be demonstrated in a specific service case area defined to be central areas in Oslo, Norway.

RTS aims at demonstrating that such a service is possible and that it will produce vehicle counts and statistics that are of value for different governmental bodies involved in road traffic planning and monitoring.

The RTS project is a joint project between the Norwegian Computing Center (prime contractor), the Institute of Transport Economics (Transportøkonomisk Institutt – subcontractor) and the Norwegian Public Roads Authority (Statens vegvesen – user).

For more information contact: Marit Holden

Back to Section for Earth Observation