Evaluation

The objective of this activity is to collect, analyse and evaluate measured data. This will provide answers to the evaluation questions. And it will provide proof of the actual operations of the SOCRATES^2.0 concept.

SOCRATES^2.0 Final Evaluation report

The main evaluation goals are:

to learn about the feasibility and the usefulness for future large scale implementations of interactive traffic management;
to learn about the public acceptance of new and extended services and their actual effects on traffic performance indicators;
to learn how interactive traffic management can be deployed, based on the interaction between traffic centres and back offices;
the creation of a generic solution for the exchange protocol for traffic demand and traffic management related information between traffic centres and back offices;
the creation of a common framework for the cooperation and agreements between road authorities and service providers and car industries.

Data collection

To draw reliable conclusions and to provide valuable recommendations and guidelines for further deployment, large scale tests in a real operational environment during a sufficient long period of time are required. The collect data consists of:

Functional performance data
At least 9.000 drivers will participate in four pilot during six months. Each driver/vehicle produces large sets of data (locations, speed, travel times, routes, but also acceptance rates, etc.).

Technical performance data
In each pilot, via partners or via system loggings, data will be collected on the TMex protocol, quality of data exchange, common operational pictures and the reliability and accuracy of the integrated system.

Organisational performance data
These are the effects on the organisation, commercial interests, maturity of services, legal circumstances, etc. It also provides insight in the effect on governance and role of intermediaries. And finally data on costs, benefits and added value are collected.

Data analyses and evaluations

The ex-post evaluation results are compared with the expectations from the ex-ante to judge the actual performance and impact against the expected one. The FESTA approach will be applied for selected parts in the assessment. The ex-post evaluation will be coordinated and financed by Rijkswaterstaat, but will be executed by an independent consultant.

The evaluation results will provide insight in:

results for road users: a.o. real-time travel advice and communication;
results for road authorities: o.a. better information on traffic status and coordination of traffic management measures,
results for service providers and car industries: information on the when and why of traffic management measures, provision of better and more trustworthy advices, user acceptance and willingness to follow advices;
organisational implementation needs: roles and functions for stakeholders, business models, contractual agreements and schemes, bottlenecks and enablers and accompanying public policy structures;
functional implementation needs: value of new and extended services, value of common data exchange protocol, value of common operational picture and value of interactive traffic management algorithms;
technical implementation needs: technical adaptations to traffic centre and back office systems, correctness, reliability, security, privacy and real-time performance of services, availability and liability of data, adequate HMI design and risks and mitigation measures.