Johnson Controls provides virtual intercity traffic management platform for smarter road networks

A new report has confirmed Australia’s road infrastructure is failing to keep up with urban growth and consumer demands.

Traffic congestion is set to double unless governments commit to doing more to meet the needs of the nation. While investment in roads and transport infrastructure continues to be a strong national focus, the use of smarter traffic management systems is vital.

Trends > Transport and Australia’s Development to 2040 and Beyond highlights the importance of traffic technology in helping to reduce the operational cost of new infrastructure, improving the efficiency of existing infrastructure, and ultimately reducing congestion while increasing road safety.

Johnson Controls Traffic and Transport is at the forefront of smart traffic technology, having worked collaboratively with government road authorities in Australia and overseas for more than 20 years. It is considered a global expert in complex Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Urban Traffic Control (UTC), incorporating both hardware and software solutions and elements, such as controllers and lanterns, into freeways, tunnels, tolling systems and multimodal transport platforms.

Meridian is the Johnson Controls Traffic and Transport flagship system that road authorities and asset owners rely on. Meridian provides a comprehensive framework for managing and monitoring motorways and tunnels; it detects incidents, calculates travel times, monitors speed limits, controls CCTV cameras and transfers data and critical information to external systems for traffic authorities to manage.

The Meridian system’s virtual capabilities extend as far as the network reaches, connecting with devices in different cities so they can share data and generate reports on transport infrastructure usage. This extended interoperability is also open sourced, with the interface accepting plug-in protocol converters to provide a secure connection to other systems.

Meridian connects thousands of devices and plugs into numerous applications to keep road networks running smoothly. CCTV, wireless and fibre links, variable electronic road signs, and traffic monitoring devices placed along motorways, communicate through a single configurable system. The Meridian system captures real-time data to optimise planning and management, using traffic detection algorithms to identify areas of congestion, queues, and bottlenecks, alerting operators instantaneously.

Information for operators is displayed graphically in easy to read formats and controlled manually or automatically in a number of ways such as SCADA/Schematics or full Geo-Spacial mapping. This allows operators to respond to incidents and critical emergency situations quickly and easily.

The Meridian system is available as a family of software components that can be supplemented by custom applications. The framework is open sourced, meaning it can plug into either Johnson Controls Traffic and Transport or third-party applications as needed, working side-by-side to deliver a holistic tailored enterprise solution with key elements consisting of:

• Meridian Bus – the backbone of Meridian where any number of Meridian application modules can be integrated using open standards such as CORBA and JDBC.
• Meridian Core – a standard set of modules that provide basic functions such as security, event and alarm management, data management and logging.
• Meridian Apps – custom and standard apps with features including automatic incident detection, travel time display, automatic response generation.
• Meridian GUI – an operator interface that uses scaled maps and schematic views as well as lists, forms and icons to create a pleasant and intuitive working interface.
• Meridian Tools – an extensive set of tools for managing and extending the Meridian system for producing reports.

The Meridian System is an invaluable resource for motorway owners and operators to ensure that road users, particularly police and emergency service vehicles, receive updated and reliable information as quickly as possible. It also allows operators to be both proactive and reactive, providing historical traffic data for the analysis of road capacities and usage, to assist with long-term road planning and help to improve the overall performance of the road network.

Johnson Controls has a long and distinguished industry reputation. It employs a large, Australian-based engineering team that designs, delivers and maintains world-class transportation and traffic management solutions. Its advanced urban traffic control and intelligent transport systems have been incorporated into major road networks both locally and around the world. Johnson Controls also has established relationships with many road and traffic authorities across Australia including NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Transport for NSW, VicRoads and the QLD Department of Transport and Main Roads.