Build Reliable Information and Communications Infrastructure

NEC has been engaged in numerous projects related to social infrastructure systems that support people’s daily lives.
NEC has built highly reliable information and communications infrastructure based on ICT for many years, so it can help establish a society where people can lead safer, more secure and comfortable lives.
Here, we present the traffic management systems that underpin the foundation of the transportation network.

Traffic Management Systems for Ensuring the Safety and Security of Expressways

Leveraging Years of Expertise and Advanced Technological Prowess to Build Expressways with Customers

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NEC delivered a traffic control system to Central Nippon Expressway Company Limited (NEXCO Central) before the new expressway opened.
NEC has supplied traffic management systems to expressway operators since 1984. To date, deliveries have been for the Tomei Expressway, the Meishin Expressway, the Hokuriku Expressway, the Tohoku and Joban Expressways, and the Chuo Expressway. Our cutting-edge traffic management systems are the fruit of accumulated expertise and advanced technological capabilities and tackling various systems operations challenges in the field through collaboration with customers.

Systems That Drivers and Operators Can Trust

In Japan, there are more than 70 million registered vehicles. In support of this motorization, Japan has a nationwide network of expressways, social infrastructure that is essential for trucks to transport massive volumes of cargo and for cars to travel efficiently. Traffic management systems function around the clock, 365 days a year so drivers using these expressways can travel safely, securely, and comfortably. These systems play crucial roles such as gathering road and other data from sensors and emergency telephones installed along roads, communicating with and giving instructions to expressway control centers, and providing traffic information to drivers.
NEXCO Central, NEC’s customer, has positioned the supply of real-time traffic information, which has so far been difficult to achieve, as a pivotal concept in the development of new traffic management systems. With the Tomei Expressway, the collection of road data and the supply of traffic information have so far been conducted at roughly five-minute intervals. The project sought to reduce the interval to about one minute, or five times quicker than today. As a result, drivers can obtain more realistically reliable information with few time lags.
It is essential to build a comprehensive information environment in which personnel at expressway control centers housing traffic control systems can accurately assess road conditions based on information gathered in real time, with information being efficiently shared and confirmed in the center. One vital priority is to make networks more robust and highly reliable so systems can remain operational even after major disasters.

Facilitating Real-time Information Provision with High-speed Processing of Big Data

Expressways already deploy traffic counters, rain, wind, and other weather information sensors, seismographs, boards that inform drivers about traffic conditions, and other facilities.
The Shin-Tomei Expressway offers vastly improved devices for inputting and outputting information. For example, traffic counters are positioned at intervals of one kilometer, compared with two-kilometer intervals on the Tomei Expressway. Furthermore, data are collected every minute on the Shin-Tomei Expressway and Tomei Expressway. For this, much greater processing power is required.
The collected data are processed immediately, and delivered to drivers almost in real time  through various means, specifically road information boards, highway radio transmissions, vehicle information and communication system (VICS)*-enabled car navigation systems, service area information terminals, and other means.
At NEXCO Central’s Tokyo control center, NEC servers perform integrated, high-speed processing of this big data.

*VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System): an information and communication system that communicates congestion, traffic restrictions and other road traffic information in real time and displays text and graphics on car navigation systems and other in-vehicle devices.

A Grandstand View of Tomei and Shin-Tomei Expressway Road Conditions on a Giant Screen

At its Tokyo control center, NEXCO Central installed a 4 meter by 18 meter display that comprises 64 46-inch LCDs (4 rows high, 16 columns wide). This is one of the largest screens in Japan for an expressway traffic management system.
Screens show conditions on the Tomei Expressway, Shin-Tomei Expressway, and related motorways that the center controls. They also show at a glance and in real time where accidents, congestion, weather changes, earthquakes, or other phenomena have occurred. The screens can also be used to confirm the information displayed on road information boards.
Traffic controllers keep tabs on constantly changing information on screens, issuing accident response and traffic restriction instructions as needed to locations.
When developing this giant screen, NEC focused on conducting systems integration mindful of the operators. To this end, NEC took steps such as enhancing design completeness by constructing a full-scale mock-up of the display on company premises and having traffic controllers actually evaluate the user friendliness of the screen.

Quick and Stable Collection, Processing and Provision of Various Information via Optical IP Networks

The networks underpinning new traffic management systems are being revamped so they can gather, process, and rapidly deliver vast amounts of information.
The new networks linking sensors, road information boards, and emergency phones installed along roads with expressway control centers and other facilities utilize IP technology and optical data transmission technology capable of high-speed, large-capacity communications. The former networks have been replaced with cutting-edge optical IP networks that can exchange a comprehensive range of information, such as data, voice communications and camera images.
The use of ring networks with built-in redundancy creates a framework in which communications remain stable even if failures occur through high-speed switching to operational communications pathways.
We are also constructing backup systems so if the Tokyo control center goes down in a major disaster, counterpart centers can take over its expressway control tasks.

Aiming to Realize Safe, Secure and Comfortable Transportation Infrastructure

It is said that effectively harnessing Big Data and networks can contribute to resolving the various issues arising from motorization, including increases in traffic accidents, congestion, and air pollution.　In this sense, the traffic management systems we have presented have the potential to expand not only throughout Japan, but also around the world going forward.
NEC will take even more advantage of its expertise in utilizing Big Data and networks to pursue the challenge of creating new value through such means as developing advanced congestion prediction systems. In doing so, NEC aims to help realize safe, secure, and comfortable transportation infrastructure.

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