Skip to main content

Traficon incident detection technology deployed in Dartford tunnel

Traficon has been awarded a contract to provide 70 VIP-IP video image processing boards for installation in the Dartford tunnel on London’s M25 orbital motorway. The technology will be installed in collaboration with Vital Technology Ltd, and will provide extensive automatic incident detection (AID) capabilities, including the detection of stopped vehicles and smoke detection. The Dartford - Thurrock river crossing is one of Europe's most heavily used crossings and complex traffic management systems. An ave
June 26, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
5574 Traficon has been awarded a contract to provide 70 VIP-IP video image processing boards for installation in the Dartford tunnel on London’s M25 orbital motorway. The technology will be installed in collaboration with 6028 Vital Technology Ltd, and will provide extensive automatic incident detection (AID) capabilities, including the detection of stopped vehicles and smoke detection.

The Dartford - Thurrock river crossing is one of Europe's most heavily used crossings and complex traffic management systems. An average of 140,000 vehicles a week pass through the crossing, which comprises two dual-lane tunnels carrying traffic to the north and a four-lane cable-stayed bridge carrying traffic to the south.

“This award demonstrates Traficon’s strong market position in video based automatic incident detection systems and our client’s confidence in our solutions,” said Sukhdev Bhogal, business development director at Traficon. “By detecting incidents fast, secondary accidents can be avoided and traffic congestion reduced dramatically.”

The Traficon VIP-IP is a multi-functional video image processor for traffic control using network cameras. It integrates automatic incident detection, data collection, vehicle presence detection, digital recording of pre and post-incident video sequences and streaming video in one board for a variety of traffic management applications such as tunnels, highways and bridges. The board makes use of field-proven Traficon algorithms that were implemented in other boards like VIP-T video detection board for analogue cameras. The company claims this ensures high reliability and a low false alarm rate of this new IP version right from the start.

Data, events and alarms generated by the VIP-IP detector boards are handled by Traficon’s Flux management system. The main goal of Flux is to manage and control all traffic information generated by these various detectors and to make it useful, meaningful and relevant to the user.

Traficon has been awarded several AID tunnel projects in the UK over the past few years, with the Tyne, Hatfield and Medway Tunnels as the major examples. Last year, the company successfully commissioned 40 VIP-T AID detector boards in the northbound Blackwall tunnel, which is set to be a crucial traffic gateway towards the Olympic stadium in East London during the upcoming Summer Olympic Games.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Traffic monitoring and hard shoulder running
    March 1, 2013
    Hard shoulder running is on the increase – and the detection and monitoring of incidents on affected roads is occupying the minds of experts across Europe and the US
  • UK defaults to hard shoulder running to expand motorway capacity
    April 8, 2014
    Hard shoulder running has become the UK’s default response to increasing motorway capacity as Colin Sowman reports. Facing a predicted 46% increase in traffic levels by 2040 and the current economic recovery leading to more people travelling to, from and for work leaves the UK government under short- and long-term pressure to increase the capacity on the main motorway network. Particular sections of motorways are already experiencing repeated, sometimes tidal, congestion and both tight Treasury limits and t
  • Traffic Tech commissions Qatar's first tunnel management system
    February 1, 2012
    Traffic Tech (Gulf), in partnership with Telegra, has commissioned the first tunnel management system in Qatar, an ITS project implemented on the newly opened Ras Abu Aboud Tunnel that links Corniche and Wakrah Road, leading to the New Doha International Airport.
  • Detection analysis technology successfully predicts traffic flows
    February 3, 2012
    David Crawford investigates new detection analysis technology from IBM. Locations on both the East and West Coasts of the US are scheduled for early deployments of IBM's new Traffic Prediction Tool (TPT) statistical analysis model for the fine-time resolution and near-term prediction of road flow conditions. Developed by IBM's Watson Research Laboratories, TPT is designed to analyse data from the the key detection indicators - average vehicle volumes and speeds passing a location in a given time interval -