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The purpose of this report is to give an overview of the number of Minnesota agencies that use Infrastructure or Pavement Management software and provide information as to their common components and requirements. Software of this type is used to store and analyze the various components of an agency's infrastructure. This might include such things as streets, highways, bridges, signs, utilities, etc. Most systems of this type are capable of data storage, retrieval, analysis and forecasting or projecting future conditions and need for maintenance. A Federal Highway Administration policy, issued January 13, 1989, requires all states to have a fully operational Pavement Management System (PMS) within four years of the issuance of the policy. As more and more states implement a PMS, the number of county and city agencies will also likely increase. This report reviews the current status of Minnesota cities and counties in terms of their implementation and use of software of this type.

This project researched image compression methods for storage and transmission of digital images at the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT). Researchers compared the performance of several commercial and research methods for image compression based on the "typical" image provided by the Mn/DOT Office of Land Management. They also surveyed some new image compression methods based on wavelet thresholding. The report details the analyses and comparisons and includes recommendations. Researchers chose MrSID, a commercial software package for image compression, as a suitable method for the needs of MnDOT's Office of Land Management. MrSID uses a wavelet transform-based algorithm to achieve both the efficient storage and retrieval of large digital images. Its main practical advantages include improved utilization of storage and transmission resources and a multi-resolution browsing capability. MrSID can selectively decompress a portion of an image by zooming at different levels of detail.

This project focuses on the issues involved in wireless transmission of video data and addresses two main issues: video compression and quality of service. The report describes the research experiment, analysis, and results. Researchers compared several compression techniques that are commercially available and recommended wavelet-based compression technique for video compression and network prioritization for issues related to quality of service.

This report outlines the development of a suite of computer codes collectively referred to as MnDrain. These codes, embedded in a standard spreadsheet program, provide a user-friendly environment in which the consequences of an edge drain design decision can be investigated. The purpose of an edge drain is to remove moisture from the granular base of the road system. The rate at which moisture is removed will depend on the geometry and materials used in the base and the soil type in the subgrade. MnDrain allows for evaluation of a given drain design against Federal Highway Administration requirements. In MnDrain, the user can chose from three basic scenarios, select material types and adjust geometries for each scenario, and calculate the moisture removal versus time curve over a two-hour drainage time. The work in this report shows that MnDrain is easy to use, flexible, and produces accurate approximate solutions of the Richard's model of variable saturated flow in a layered media. MnDrain also offers the advantage of offering free access to all source codes, which means that MnDrain can be reconfigured to deal with a large array of pavement drainage issues.

The objective of this report is to complete work undertaken at the University of Minnesota in the mid 1990's. This work was directed at developing an understanding of frost heaves in relationship to the lifting of buried objects such as shallow sewers. The critical findings in the field investigation were detailed in a 1995 final report by Ray Sterling, "Progressive Lifting of Shallow Sewers: Field Investigation." Preliminary details of the modeling work were provided in an interim project report and complete details were provided in the MS thesis of Lingjun Hou, "An Investigation of a Lumped Parameter Frost Heave Model," published by the University of Minnesota in January 1994. The objective of the current report is to outline the critical findings in the modeling work detailed in the previous interim report and Hou's thesis. This document should be seen as a complement to the original final report submitted by Sterling in 1995. The central objective of the modeling study is the investigation of the lumped parameter frost heave model developed by Blanchard and Fremond. The work in this report shows that a lumped porosity model can generate an accurate comparison with experiments and is a feasible tool for the investigation of the effect of freeze thaw on buried infrastructure.

Researchers from the University of Toronto have developed a computer-based, decision support tool to assess the risks of vehicle-emitted chemical contaminants, affecting wildlife in the Twin Cities urban areas, as well as a decision support tool to assess the risks to birds and mammals of chemical contaminants released by vehicles.

The authors present a vision-based method for monitoring crowded urban scenes in an outdoor environment: background detection, visual noise from weather, objects that move in different directions, and conditions that change from day to evening. Several systems of visual detection have been proposed previously. This system captures speed and direction as well as position, velocity, acceleration, or deceleration, bounding box, and shape features. It measures movement of pixels within a scene and uses mathematical calculations to identify groups of points with similar movement characteristics. It is not limited by assumptions about the shape or size of objects, but identifies objects based on similarity of pixel motion. Algorithms are used to determine direction of crowd movement, crowd density, and mostly used areas. The speed of the software in calculating these variables depends on the quality of detection set in the first stage. Illustrations include video stills with measurement areas marked on day, evening, and indoor video sequences. The authors foresee that this system could be used for intersection control, collection of traffic data, and crowd control.

A corridor simulation environment with the capability of modeling various types of traffic control strategies as external control modules is critically important in developing and improving corridor management strategies. In this research, a microscopic network simulation model, Vissim, is used to develop such an environment. The new stratified Minnesota Department of Transportation metering algorithm was simulated using the 169 freeway, and its performance was compared with that of the fixed-metering method. Based on that analysis, an alternative approach to determining each entrance ramp's minimum metering rate was developed and coded, as well as an adaptive approach to automatically coordinating a freeway meter with the adjacent intersection signal. The results clearly show the advantage of reducing the overall delay at the ramp-intersection area, while producing higher or compatible total vehicle-miles compared with the conventional intersection-control methods, i.e., pre-timed and actuated, without employing ramp metering. The corridor evaluation environment can be used for future studies, including the continuous enhancement of the stratified metering algorithm to take advantage of the maximum allowable wait time, automatic identification of the most effective metering strategy depending on prevailing traffic conditions, and extension of the adaptive coordination method to multiple intersections adjacent to a freeway entrance ramp. Note: The Phase I report is available at https://hdl.handle.net/11299/856.

This report summarizes the results from the technical support and testing of the freeway traffic simulation software developed at the University of Minnesota. The University's Civil Engineering Department developed and implemented an experimental course that addressed fundamental theories in traffic flow modeling and simulation. They also incorporated a set of an online help manual into simulation software. Software testing was conducted through two sets of case studies involving the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane and ramp metering simulation modules. The HOV lane case study used a 10-mile section of the westbound I-94 freeway with an additional lane and evaluated the performance of alternative HOV lane strategies with different sets of demand and HOV proportions. For the same amount of total demand without assuming induced trips, the higher the HOV proportion, the smaller the mainline delay. The ramp metering case study compared the performance of the current Minnesota Department of Transportation metering policy with that of a no-metering option for a 16-mile section of the northbound 169 freeway with 20% higher demand than the current level. The metering case study showed that the total system delay, including both mainline ramps, was significantly reduced when the ramps were controlled compared to a no-metering case for a given set of demand. The case studies indicate that the simulation software can be applicable in evaluating alternative design and operational strategies for a given set of demands.

This Technical Summary pertains to Report 2009-35, “Mn/DOT Intelligent Compaction Implementation Plan: Procedures to Use and Manage IC Data in Real Time,” published December 2009.