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Comprising more than 4,000 miles
of motorways and major A-road
in England, the Strategic Road
Network (SRN) is operated
by Highways England (HE). While the network represents a core piece of national infrastructure, it is difficult for HE to gain a meaningful overview of operations, due to a multitude of models
and databases.To help give the government-owned company improved insight, the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) has joined forces with HE and four other organisations to develop a national simulation of the SRN, taking in every single motorway and A-road in the country (including links and junctions), combined with representative traffic data. The simulation has been created using the SpatialOS cloud computing platform, which was originally conceived for the gaming industry. This enables the hosting of large-scale and detailed simulations, and helps to overcome challenges experienced in current traffic modelling platforms due to constraints in memory and processing power. Features include: the ability to close and open lanes, implement speed changes on road sections, and incorporate congestion propagation algorithms; and vehicle routing. In the long-term, the national simulation offers HE the opportunity to bring its current traffic models and other network systems and databases together in one place to provide a single source of intelligence
to support its business operations. This will facilitate a common set of tools for the assessment of network impacts, which has the potential to provide significant efficiency savings. The visionary platform envisaged is unique, has significant support of several external organisations, and could potentially become the main foundation for
a national simulation model covering the entire strategic and local road network. Other partners in the programme include Immense Simulations, an applied technology company spun out from the TSC, whose tools deliver enhanced decision- making capabilities, both strategically and operationally; simulation studio Improbable; Spanish telecommunications group Telefonica; and Mixed Reality studio Kazendi. A NEW TYPE OF SIMULATION MODEL THAT TAKES IN EVERY MAJOR ROAD
IN THE COUNTRY HAS THE POTENTIAL TO TRANSFORM HIGHWAYS ENGLAND’S OPERATIONSHIGHWAYS TO EFFICIENCYTHIS VISIONARY PLATFORM COULD POTENTIALLY BECOME
THE MAIN FOUNDATION
FOR A NATIONAL SIMULATION MODEL BelowThe project aims to
simulate the entire
Highways England
Strategic Road NetworkPROJECTS30IMAGINECASE STUDY