Cloud-Based Intelligent Framework Design to Collect Traffic Data and Notify Accidents: In the case of Addis Adama Expressway

Abstract

On-road accidents are a key issue for road safety and are a major source of loss of lives and property both for drivers and passengers. Even with all the modern developments in the field of vehicle design, transportation infrastructure and in-vehicle technology, Addis Adama Expressway are considered to be one of highly trafficked and accidental roads in the country. which usually cause a high death toll. Sizeable portion of these deaths occur due to a delayed response by medical care providers and rescue authorities. Timely accident detection, location detection and concurrent action informing an emergency responders could drastically increase the chances of survival of an accident victim. This paper proposes a multi-tier real-time accident detection and notification framework for Addis Adama Expressway. The proposed multitier approach utilizes a IoT-based vehicular environment, V2X Communication, Edge and Cloud computing. In this work, vehicles are equipped with an On-Board Unit (OBU) that includes accelerometer and gyroscope sensors for reliable and timely accident detection along with a Global Positioning System (GPS) module for identification of accident location. In order to facilitate vehicle to infrastructure communication, OBU in each vehicle incorporates a wireless networking interface. A vehicle OBU detects an accident by periodically measuring the acceleration and the angular velocity of the vehicle. Once an accident occurs it generates an alert message. It then sends the message along with the accident location, time and plate number to an intermediate device, placed at the edge of the road called an edge device. An edge device works based on edge computing technology and performs function of receiving the notification, pre processing of data and effectively works as a link between a vehicle and cloud computing tier. As notification message received at edge device, it finds the nearest emergency responder and makes a request to the identified emergency responder. In addition, a significant issue those relevant authorities currently facing is the real-time visualization, analysis and permanent storage of data obtained from the vehicular tier. In light of this, a cloud computing tier, which is hosted on azure cloud service provider is proposed. Besides the framework has been evaluated through experts in automotive industries, IT sectors and relevant authorities in terms of achieving the outlined objectives and requirements.