The price point seems pretty good for a 3rd generation product. What do you think?
Now DIVI might have helped US West with this project, but they SHOULD have gotten the encoder sale(s) too. DIVI you let this one get away and there are a lot of cities that may do projects like this!
techweb.com
A Green Light From US West -- Telecom Giant Helps Phoenix Integrate Its Traffic Management System
Ramin P. Jaleshgari, Senior Writer
Like those in many congested metropolitan areas, residents surrounding Phoenix have often been driven crazy by traffic woes, including congestion, dangerous intersections or roadway construction. In order to alleviate such driver dilemmas in Phoenix, the Maricopa County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) has been a leader in leveraging IT resources to keep abreast of regional transit issues.
Integral to the establishment of MCDOT's interactive travel and transit system was local telco and systems integrator Interprise, the services division of US West, Boulder, Colo. When the Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure (ITI) implemented by US West began to garner national recognition, ultimately becoming part of a federal model selected to demonstrate integrated transportation systems and travel information systems, MCDOT had to reassess its system with an eye toward upgrading the network to include a larger statewide reporting structure.
The live monitoring system initially placed throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area is made up of nine remote sites with a central location all tied into the central hub. ITI also taps into the state Department of Transportation's (AZDOT) Trailmaster Freeway Management System to aid its directive to monitor traffic flow through the use of networked road sensors, electronic signs, video cameras and communications equipment. The system detects congestion, identifies traffic-stopping situations, notifies accident response teams and suggests alternate routes for drivers.
Eager to build on their joint accomplishments, sharing them with travelers statewide while demonstrating its capabilities as a model site, MCDOT/ AZDOT began the AZTech Intelligent Transportation System Model Deployment Initiative.
A seven-year project, comprising two years of implementation to be completed in 1998 and five years of subsequent operation, AZTech will further develop Phoenix's integrated intelligent transportation system through freeway and arterial street tracking. Intended to serve approximately 97 percent of the state's population, the main goal of the initiative is to provide a comprehensive network to allow sharing of information and video images gleaned through traffic monitoring hardware.
To achieve its goal, existing ITI systems had to be supplemented or upgraded in order to serve a wider area network. Maricopa's first step was to look to a familiar face: US West.
US West is Arizona's regional telephone communications carrier, providing telephone service to Maricopa for more than 100 years-predating Arizona's statehood. As such, the company supplied the analog lines that comprised most of the original ITI system-lines that would have to integrate seamlessly with the new fiber-optic cable that was recommended.
"In order to fill the AZTech mandate for information sharing, Maricopa County needed an even more efficient system than what we had in place," says AZTech project manager Pierre Pretorious. "That required digital video equipment that could work with existing analog lines and fiber backbone we were going to put in place to provide clear images in real time, along with hubs and routers that could handle the volume of incoming data."
US West's Business Interprise Services Solutions division proposed its backbone ATM cell relay service, Cisco Systems Inc.'s Lightstream 1010 Catalyst 5500 and Cisco 4700 routers for data relay. For video capabilities, the company began to carefully weigh its options-transmission quality problems with past implementations of cameras filming high-speed situations had proved tricky.
"We had to work under certain, very specific, parameters: MCDOT needed a better quality video streaming system that would not become obsolete quickly but had strict budgetary guidelines," says a spokesperson for US West's Business Interprise Services Solutions. "We explored full-motion video options, which were too costly, and 6- to 10-MB Motion JPEG, which was not the quality desired. We had to look for another alternative."
That alternative came in the form of Optivision, a Palo-Alto, Calif., digital video communications firm with which US West had never worked before.
Optivision's LiveSystem products are based on MPEG1/MPEG2 video compression and the use of IP and ATM network protocols, and WAN, Windows client-server and Web-based interfaces. As such, they seemed to be a fix specifically slated for the client's needs.
In order to prove the Optivision product's efficacy to Maricopa County, the combined US West/ Cisco integration team set up a lab at the customer's location complete with an Optivision station, 1010 ATM switch, routers, cameras and VCRs. They then simulated video streaming from a road shot through the system and adjusted bandwidth between 2 Mb and 4 Mb from the Optivision codex until the satisfactory number of 2.5 was settled upon.
"It was important for us to examine the video standards that were available, meshing them closely with the customer's requirements and demonstrating that marriage through a lab implementation," says Steve Greschner, Cisco systems' account manager. "The MPEG2 encoding gave us the ability to run high-speed, high-quality video in a much smaller space over shared service."
The primary interface between the onsite cameras and the Cisco hub/ router configuration is a 100-MB Ethernet. The video signals were then digitized and compressed into IP packets. Once fed the images, Optivision LiveSystem encodes them as a MPEG2 video stream.
"One of the other nice things about Optivision was that through them we were able to select Ethernet rather than one of the more expensive end devices out there," says Greschner.
To date, agencies from 13 cities within Maricopa County are sharing information through the AZTech system. There are 42 miles of freeway covered by video with 10 cameras deployed on a local street network that route to each of the individual cities' operations centers. The shared freeway management portion of the system is on its own fiber backbone and feeds back to the state's traffic management department and to a citizen-accessible Web site.
Together with Cisco, US West was able to evaluate a product it had never before used in order to enlarge, yet simplify, the network and systems Maricopa County already had in place. The digital and IP format of the integrated package will allow end users to take video information and easily route it for use with different applications in a way that was difficult with the old, primarily analog system. Among the features the product may include are easy archiving/recall functions that would be fed to a television station-a project that the county has slated for the future.
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Case Study
INTEGRATOR: US West Interprise Services
Client: MCDOT, Phoenix
The Problem: Maricopa County needed to upgrade its traffic monitoring system to enable traffic information-sharing among cities.
- System needed to provide near-studio quality video images while operating within a mandated budget.
- The network needed to be as close to fail-safe as possible.
- Real-time photograph transmission/data reporting necessity to alleviate potential traffic problems.
- Future information-sharing with other state/county agencies required easy upgradability.
The Solution: A combination of hardware and services from US West and Cisco, coupled with Optivision videoconferencing software, created the infrastructure of Maricopa County Traffic Operations Center (TOC).
Street-mounted cameras throughout Maricopa County feed images over:
- IP network and 100-MB Ethernet link, which feeds...
- one Cisco Lightstream 1010, one Cisco Catalyst 5500 and 10 Cisco 4700 routers to...
- one SPARC server.
All that equipment, plus...
- 12 Dell GX Pros running Windows NT; Optivision LiveSystem Encoder; and TRW's Toolbox management software...is located at the Phoenix-based Traffic Operations Center. |
