Road information systems; impact of geographic information systems technology to automatic vehicle navigation and guidance

A prototype road information system being developed at the University is a special-purpose geographic information system that collects, organizes, and disseminates information related to the street and highway networks of a city or region. The basic structure is the road and street network made up of a series of nodes and links, by which attributes from different applications can be referenced. The structure, if properly designed, can serve many applications such as route determination and guidance, commercial and service information provision, dispatching and monitoring of fleet vehicles, and road inventory and traffic management. The current research effort of the prototype concentrates on data modeling, spatial database management, communications, and real-time applications for the many automatic vehicle location, navigation, and guidance systems presently being developed.<>