Data Enhancement for Responsive Work Zone Safety Measures through Integration of Real-Time Incident Alerts and Lane Closure Records

Traditional work zone safety analysis and applications often rely on historical work zone and crash data. Those data are often in different formats and based on various location reference systems. It would cost agencies considerable amounts of time and resources to identify potential issues; by the time all of the different reference data sets are linked such that problems and issues can be identified, the project would be over. It is desirable to improve the data integration approach and push forward the level of work zone safety and mobility, especially for mega and long-term projects. Today, many agencies have information systems for work zone and crash data management, which can be of great help to speed up the data integration and therefore make responsive countermeasures possible. This study demonstrated a proof of concept to support real-time work zone orientated data integration, based on the fusion of the work zone data from a statewide work zone management system and a real-time traffic incident alert system from a state traffic operations center. This study is an attempt to integrate and share data with different operational systems used by different agencies. Although this study is based on systems developed and used by the State of Wisconsin, this approach is easy to be adopted by other states and agencies with similar systems.