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Road Traffic Equipment and Analysis Laboratory


The Road Traffic Equipment and Analysis Laboratory (UETRAF) is part of the Planning, Traffic and Safety Unit (NPTS), of the Transportation Department of LNEC.

UETRAF was created in 2010 with a view to support the collection, validation and organization of road traffic information in data bases appropriate for supporting observational traffic studies, as required by LNEC’s research activities and external requests.

Additional information can be found at this laboratory's flyer.

Field of expertise

The activity developed at UETRAF consists in collecting and managing information referring to the road transport system operation, particularly as regards those aspects related to mobility, safety, economy and environment which require the collection and processing of different data on the road network elements, the national vehicle fleet, accidents, traffic and other.

The activity carried out at UETRAF follows four major lines:
  • road testing;
  • collection of relevant public information;
  • collected data management;
  • studies involving traffic simulation.

Testing

The UETRAF performs, among others, the following field tests:
  • vehicle class counts, as well as vehicle speed and headway measurement using video equipment;
  • cross section distribution of traffic wheels using video equipment;
  • spot speed measurement of individual vehicles, with RADAR or LIDAR;
  • manual tracking of road users’ movements at intersections;
  • automatic collection of key road traffic characteristics using portable devices installed on the pavement surface;
  • automatic collection of key road traffic characteristics using roadside installed portable devices;
  • transport passenger counting and origin-destination surveys;
  • measurement of road design characteristics;
  • survey of geographic and cartographic coordinates using gps systems;
  • total station survey of accident scene;
  • macrotexture depth measurement using the volumetric patch technique;
  • observation of traffic conflicts.Main laboratory tests performed by UETRAF include the following:
  • geocoding of road accidents;
  • audits to safety reports prepared by road concessionaires;
  • survey of vehicle trajectory from aerial photographs;
  • detection of accident black spots.

Other services

Further to the described field and laboratory characterization studies, usually within LNEC’s planned research and research under contract for external entities, UETRAF may also cooperate in:
  • road accident reconstruction;
  • safety assessment of streets and interurban roads;
  • planning of road safety interventions on operating roads.