G+_George Kozi Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Originally shared by George Kozi Passing thought: every few miles along highways, there should be arches (or gates if you want) through which all traffic must pass. These should be packed with sensors that monitor and control the traffic, weather conditions, air quality, sniff for radioactive and hazardous materials, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Mike Trieu (MegasChara) Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Or those sensors could be built into all our mobiles and an app like Waze could report them in real-time to all participants. We already have all the necessary sensors except for air quality and radioactivity/hazmat. But Google's already provided a way to interface with external sensors via the Open Accessory framework. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Dave Trautman Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Right now the detection of radioactive materials is not instantaneous. On container ports in the US there are these 'gates' and the container has to sit there for about 30 minutes to properly be scanned. Hazmat handling is a lot harder than what we see in the movies. Once you find that rogue truck, then what? Who pulls them over? What do you do with the truck? Where is a safe place? All this before considering that if you had such arches/gates anyone wishing to avoid detection would employ techniques for concealment. The air quality thing might not be as important just on the highway. Most of the contribution to poor air quality from where I live does not come from the overwhelming number of cars and trucks but from the industry which feeds our local economy. No need for gates there. I don't mind the idea so much but the larger issues it brings up need a more comprehensive response to be effective in controlling what you are sensing for. It's nice to guess correctly what the smell is coming from my neighbour's house. It's another thing to know if it's a "grow op". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Dave Trautman Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 In terms of controlling traffic I can tell you my municipal government invested heavily decades ago on having sensors at every controlled intersection in the entire city. From there they can centrally monitor traffic movement and adjust the timing of lights at intersections to accommodate unexpected traffic congestion. It's a marvellous system. Wire in embedded in the pavement detects all sizes of vehicles and can even count them as they pass through. A central monitoring office gets a warning from the system if loads and movement exceed normal. They can strategize and adjust routes around construction and even large accidents. The system also can self-adjust for traffic "priorities" in the middle of the night. If north-south has no traffic then the lights stay east-west longer. Once someone arrives the lights then revert back. It is also used for emergency vehicles on major routes. In our area they make immense vessels for oil and gas processing plants. These need to move out of the city in the dark of night. Crews lift power lines along dedicated routes (poles are specially designed for this lifting thing) and the traffic is held up on streets approaching the vessel transport's location. Some of these vessels can only be moved at 5 kmh. We have recently started using traffic cameras at major crossings (8 lane x 8 lane) to see cars waiting too long for turn lights to change. If the back up line gets too long the system will interrupt the usual pattern and try to clear the backed up line. These are expected to be installed more widely not that they have proven very useful. I can also report there is an air monitoring station near my neighbourhood which is specifically sampling a plywood manufacturing plant and rail yard. Not many know it is there, but I learned of it. Apparently we have these all over the industrial areas of our city. Our police have also developed a detection system for the roadside which can tell if a large truck is properly maintaining its wheel systems. A huge number of heavy trucks are way behind on their trailer maintenance and get caught each year. The system can see heat at key points as the truck passes. Then it is waved over and inspected. They catch, literally, many hundreds of these trucks in only a couple of hours. It has improved the situation a lot in only the last 5 years. The truck fail rate was up around 95% when they started. Now it is down to 60%. As they hand out more fines the companies who own the trucks have started to maintain their trailers better and the independents have responded the most quickly because the cost and the delay is really high. That is, not having a truck costs an independent a heck of a lot until it can pass inspection. Lots of tech out there in this area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Damian Mongru Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 I don't know if you need archways to do this. There are a lot of traffic flow cameras that use cameras and sensors connected to giant lamp-post structures. A bit of clever software works out the flow. This was used many years ago for proprietary traffic systems/GPS services. Also, you can see the view of the cameras now, e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/london/trafficcameras and I think these along with other monitoring methods are used for traffic flow, e.g.: http://www.trafficengland.com/motorwayflow.aspx#mtf I assume Google taps into this data for their maps, as I'm pretty sure they had this information before Waze. I've seen some with anemometers, so they could easily measure weather, and air quality. Dave Trautman has a better idea about recording radioactivity, but I'm not sure how useful that is. Anyway, the idea is right, we just need to bring all the monitoring tools together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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