Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling

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For other uses of "MIDAS", see MIDAS (disambiguation).

Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling, usually abbreviated to MIDAS, is a distributed network of traffic sensors which are designed to set variable message signs and advisory speed limits with little human intervention. On the M25 and M42 motorways, the MIDAS helps set mandatory variable speed limit signs as part of the controlled motorway scheme.

It is presently (2006) installed on several sections of the United Kingdom's busiest motorways, such as the congested western stretch of the M25 motorway and much of the M60 motorway around Manchester, the Birmingham box (M6, M5 and M42) and the system has successfully reduced accidents ^[1]

The system replaced the Automatic Incident Detection (AID) system which was trialled in 1989 on an 83 km section of the M1 motorway. MIDAS was first installed on the M25 in 1997, after this section already had the variable speed limit (controlled motorway) scheme.

By March 2006, the Highways Agency aims to have MIDAS installed on more than 910km of the English motorway network.

1 COMPASS System
2 See also
3 External links
4 References

[edit] COMPASS System

Incident Detection algorithms have also been widely used throughout the COMPASS-enabled area of Southern Ontario, Canada. COMPASS is the Freeway Traffic Management System (FTMS) run by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Detectors are typically located as double-loop detectors embedded in the pavement every 500m along the province's major expressways. COMPASS-enabled highways include Highway 401 (one of the highest-volume highways in the world), as well as the Queen Elizabeth Way (or QEW), and Highway 417 (the Queensway) in Ottawa.

The primary algorithm used by the Ministry is known as the McMaster algorithm, designed by Professor Fred Hall of McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario.

Research on new algorithm developments and evaluations is performed at the ITS Centre and Testbed (ICAT), at the Civil Engineering department of the University of Toronto. The ICAT is equipped with direct fibre-optic links to the Ministry of Transportation, and received both traffic camera and loop detector data on a live basis. Visual data can be used to confirm the presence of incidents detected by the various algorithms.