System Components

Over a period of months, the ICM project development team will need to work closely with stakeholders to refine the high-level design for the ICM Core System. This system comprises the majority of the IT infrastructure for the ICM system, with its three major components being the data hub, decision support system, and corridor management system. The proposed system design is characterized by:

  • Storage (potentially cloud-based) design for flexibility, on-demand scalability, redundancy, and low deployment and operational costs
  • Multiple database technologies for optimized performance
  • Separate data management, decision support, and control functions for configurability
  • State, regional, and local layer design with flexibility for future scaling to other ICM corridor

View additional information on ICM System Components.

Decision Support System

Decision Support is a set of automated processes that assist human operators in making decisions involving large amounts of data, multiple solution sets, and knowledge captured as rules. Decision support functions are used in multiple places within the ICM system. Decision support functions are meant to be used in multiple places by ICM system components and include the following reusable functions:

  • Rules capture and evaluation
  • Determination of the current state of the corridor based on limited data. When evaluating response plans, it is that analysis start with knowledge of the current conditions and state of the corridor
  • Prediction of the future state of the corridor based on limited data. When evaluating response plans, it is important to consider the likely future state of the corridor.
  • Rules to determine whether corridor travel conditions are within normal expectations.

Core functionalities of the ICM system are illustrated by the two circles at the center of the figure below. The inner circle, labeled DSS for Decision Support System, represents the system components that will be tasked with making decisions. Surrounding this circle, the circle labeled ICM represents various supporting functionalities of ICM system, such as data processing and communication with external systems.

Data Hub

Data from each of the data sources are received by the ICM data hub, as represented by the red box in the diagram above.

The primary functions of the Data Hub are:

  • Receive data from field elements via center-to-center communications
  • Process data received from these field elements
  • Share or transmit data to the other systems via internal data bus
  • Data persistence

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Corridor Management System

The Corridor Management system (purple box as shown above) is the primary user interface and allows for management of the response plan lifecycle and ICM system.

Data Sources/Center-to-Center Communications

Field data sources include traffic signals, ramp meters, loop data sensors, and changeable message signs. Software systems are required to connect these field elements to the data hub and therefore to the Decision Support System. These software systems are called center-to-center communications. Sending and receiving information from the various field elements is required to activate corridor-wide response plans.

Each stakeholder may have multiple software systems in place and may require upgrades to enable system integration. In addition, it may also be necessary to install additional field elements to support the project.

For example, on a sample corridor the following five different center-to-center communication systems required integration into the ICM system.

TransCore – TransSuite  The TransSuite system is used to provide two separate C2C interfaces. The first connects the City of Arcadia’s TransCore system to the ICM core system. The second connects the Caltrans TSMSS system (a version of TransCore) to the ICM core system. 
Advanced Transportation Management System This system controls Caltrans’ changeable message signs and ramp meters.
Kimley-Horn – KITS The KITS system will provide the interface between the core ICM system and LA County, the City of Duarte, and the City of Monrovia.
McCain – Transparity The Transparity system will provide the connection between the core ICM system and the City of Pasadena.
Dynamic Message Signs The final C2C connection is between the dynamic message sign central control software and the ICM core system. The contract for development of this interface has not yet been awarded, so the vendor has yet to be named.

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