A new incident detection scheme developed in the Netherlands

Incident management can significantly reduce incidental congestion and improve traffic safety. Quick and accurate detection of incidents is required to start incident management. Dutch traffic control centers operated by the national road manager Rijkswaterstaat have real-time traffic speed and flow data available. We describe in this paper a new scheme that employs these data for detecting incidents. We also present results of field tests of this scheme, performed over a period of several months. It appears that this algorithm provides generally useful and low cost detection, in case real-time traffic data are available.