Design of Archival Traffic Databases: Quantitative Investigation into Application of Advanced Data Modeling Concepts

Given the enormous quantities of data collected by intelligent transportation systems (ITS), transportation professionals recently have focused on developing archived data user services (ADUS) to facilitate efficient use of these data in myriad transportation analyses. Most ITS systems were designed by using a transactional database design, which is not well suited to support the ad hoc queries required by ADUS. Research investigated the application of data-warehousing concepts to better support the requirements of ADUS. A case study is presented in which an ADUS for the Hampton Roads Smart Traffic Center, the regional freeway management system, was redesigned from a transactional approach to one based on data warehousing. Test queries run by using both approaches demonstrated that dramatic increases in efficiency are achievable through the use of data-warehousing concepts in ADUS.