Spatiotemporal Impact Assessments of Highway Construction: Autonomous SWAT Modeling

In the United States, the completion of Construction Work Zone (CWZ) impact assessments for all federally-funded highway infrastructure improvement projects is mandated, yet it is regarded as a daunting task for state transportation agencies, due to a lack of standardized analytical methods for developing sounder Transportation Management Plans (TMPs). To circumvent these issues, this study aims to create a spatiotemporal modeling framework, dubbed "SWAT" (Spatiotemporal Work zone Assessment for TMPs). This study drew a total of 43,795 traffic sensor reading data collected from heavily trafficked highways in U.S. metropolitan areas. A multilevel-cluster-driven analysis characterized traffic patterns, while being verified using a measurement system analysis. An artificial neural networks model was created to predict potential 24/7 traffic demand automatically, and its predictive power was statistically validated. It is proposed that the predicted traffic patterns will be then incorporated into a what-if scenario analysis that evaluates the impact of numerous alternative construction plans. This study will yield a breakthrough in automating CWZ impact assessments with the first view of a systematic estimation method.