Back to Weather and Traffic

Weather Information and Traffic Assistant (WITA) Faculty Involved: Hessam Sarjoughian, ACIMS, Computer Science & Engineering Department WITA software development team Robert Flasher, Charles Dairman, Kevin Gundlach, Felix Gorodishter, Sajjan Sarkar,Skye Sandoval, Al Welle, Daniel Bank and Seth Carpenter, all undergraduate students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University, have collectively developed the WITA software. Weilong Hu, a PhD student in (ACIMS), helped in the early part of this project which was part of a Software Engineering course offered in Fall 2004. For additional details, see the Overview and Detailed posters. A beginning… In metropolitan cities such as Phoenix, Arizona, access to current (near real-time) climate and road information can significantly impact people’s everyday activities and well-being. Effective use and management of resources (roads, fuel, etc.) are particularly important, for example, in reducing heavy road traffic when air quality is poor or severe weather conditions exist. Interestingly, no system existed to provide this simple information to any community in the United States or abroad as of summer 2004. To help individuals and groups better use their local resources, the basic concept of Weather Information and Traffic Assistant (WITA) system was conceived and developed in summer 2004. The goal of WITA was to synthesize (link) existing available climate and road conditions, make them accessible via the Internet, and thus provide a one-stop access point for weather and traffic information available to anyone with an Internet connection.  The initial conceptual software architecture of WITA was conceived to have climate and road data sources,weather and traffic data processing, adatabase for storing historical and future weather data, road and highway maps, and display and reporting modules. Of these, the weather and traffic information module is available externally from local, state, and national government agencies—Arizona Department of Transportation (MCDOT / ADOT), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and National Weather Service (NOAA)—while the other modules needed to be developed. A number of complementary capabilities using model-based simulation were considered to support prediction, in particular, for better handling of road traffic by individual drivers and coordinating vehicle movement at major highway and street intersections.Given the concept for WITA and its initial software architecture, a number of prototype software implementations were developed in fall 2004 as part of a software engineering class project (see below). Of these one was selected to be continued for redesign and development in spring 2005. The aim of this project was to employ state-of-the-art software engineering technologies and practices—Java Servlets and object-orientation—to bring together weather data (current and forecasted low/high temperatures, precipitation, humidity, wind, air quality, etc.) and road conditions (traffic density flows, accident reports, and scheduled road repairs and closings) in a single, easy to use web interface. Using web and service-oriented technologies, distinct data types and functionality are combined to generate graphic friendly weather and traffic information at varying levels of detail for web-enabled devices including PDAs, etc. Educational role of WITA in software engineering and computer science The concept and basic framework for WITA was developed by Hessam Sarjoughian for the “Introduction to Software Engineering” course he taught in fall 2004. Nine student groups developed different implementations of the WITA with varying degrees of capabilities. Some interesting features including weather data analysis (e.g., highest temperature for a period of time), live road segments traffic video feed, and simulated traffic flow were prototyped. What’s next… Large groups of commuters such as those at Arizona State University and Phoenix Sky Harbor, as well as the National and Regional Transit Agencies (e.g., Phoenix Rail System), can benefit from information available from WITA.  The WITA framework can also be used to develop siblings containing data from other cities or places where information is available. Furthermore, with the increase use of GPS devices in vehicles and handheld devices, static maps used in GPS can be turned into dynamic maps, alerting drivers of “hot spots.” Sponsorship This project has been supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation and Computer Science and Engineering Department, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. This project has been carried out in the Arizona Center for Integrative Modeling & Simulation (ACIMS) at ASU.