Visitors to the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) Innovation and Learning Festival near Warwick have seen first-hand how independent data sources can be fused together to make our roads safer.

In this demonstration, led by Coventry City Council, roadworker safety was highlighted as HRS, SRL, Ohmio and Transport for West Midlands showed how alerts from HRS’s work zone incursion solution could immediately and automatically change traffic signals to protect other traffic and stop an autonomous vehicle. It also summoned drones so they could live stream pictures of the incident to a control room.

Sunil Budhdeo, Transport innovation Manager at Coventry City Council explained: “This was all about showing that different data sources can be put together by a local authority. People talk about data, but often don’t know how to use it properly – this is a simple-to-understand use case that works because we have made the data talk to each other.”

Heidi Logie, Customer Director at Highways Resource Solutions (HRS) added that the demonstration “showcased what a piece of collaboration can do in terms of connecting systems together.”

In this case, it underlined the improvement in road worker safety and swift incident response.

Mr Budhdeo concluded with a message to other local authorities: “We are a living lab. I’m very fortunate in the position I am in at Coventry, where my senior leadership team, my politicians back me on these innovation projects,” he told the Highways News podcast “But my ask to the audience here today, is don’t work in silos – let’s have that collaboration working. I’m more than happy to come and share my experience and knowledge – please don’t shy away, come and talk to us.”

The podcast will be published next week.

(Picture – Highways News)