Application of Augmented Reality and Tangible Interfaces to Minimize Work Zone Effects on Mobility Through Participatory Planning

Highway work zones account for about 10 percent of congestion but are an absolute necessity in ensuring that our transportation infrastructure can meet the mobility demands of growing populations. Unlike other causes of congestion, such as crashes, weather events, and rush-hour traffic, work zones are a result of planned actions by stakeholders. Furthermore, work zones require people to work in proximity to passing traffic, which creates a hazardous work environment. Therefore, the two issues of commuter mobility and worker safety through work zones motivated the development of a novel means of planning for work zones to ensure that all safety precautions are taken while commuters are not unduly affected. This research developed a novel interface that enables decision makers to obtain real-time feedback on work zone strategies through visualization of how they affect commuter mobility. The developed decision support system will consist of a tangible interface and will use augmented reality to enable different stakeholders to participate in planning the design of construction work zones. It is expected that the developed interface will enable participatory planning and will provide a means of interacting with collected geospatial traffic data and simulating traffic operations. This project also improved upon previous work on calculating mass-haul quantities for determining earthwork for roadways that are constructed over undulating terrains. Both these applications provide a novel means for multiple stakeholders to simultaneously interact with transportation and construction models.