Analysis and Documentation of Roadway Incident Using Software and Photogrammetric Techniques

This report is a deliverable of a project, TR0002, sponsored by the California Office of Traffic Safety, contracted through California Department of Transportation, and conducted by California PATH. Roadway incidents, besides their direct impacts of property damage, injuries and fatalities, can quickly lead to further congestion or even secondary incidents of nearby traffic. Due to the direct and indirect effects of incidents and congestion afterwards, it is important that post-incident handling proceed as quickly as they can. One primary factor in the delays of incident handling is the necessary and proper documentation of incident information for legal and technical reasons. The prevailing method of scene measurement is often conducted by physically walking the scenes with wheel measures or similar tools. The common method and its conventional approach present several issues: time consumption, road hazard, limitations at site, and needs of photographic evidence. The objectives of this application are to resolve some, if not all, of the aforementioned issues encountered typically at accident scenes. In this project, we investigated and developed a computer software application using photogrammetric techniques to facilitate the measurement of the aforementioned incident scenes.