Objectives of Heavyroute

The project will focus on applying and combining existing and newly developed systems, technologies, databases and models to develop an advanced HGV management and route guidance system.

The objectives are to improve road safety and capacity while reducing the negative impacts on the environment and the road and bridge maintenance costs (reducing the rate of deterioration caused by heavy traffic).

Activities in HeavyRoute will be focussed on the following objectives:

System conception and user requirements

• Assessment of state-of the-art in fleet management and HGV guidance systems/services
• Identifying stakeholder and user requirements on an advanced HGV management and route guidance system
• Identifying factors that influence the “route optimization”
• Deriving a system architecture concept

Databases and vehicle /infrastructure interaction models

• Inventory of available static, periodic and dynamic road, bridge and traffic data in national databases
• Inventory of available effect models for deriving the “optimum” route and reducing impacts on the infrastructures

Route guidance and driving support

• Design and development of innovative route guidance and driver support applications for HGVs based on database contents and effect models

Traffic simulation and effects of management strategies

• Traffic simulation and assessment of possible effects and future scenarios from traffic management solutions implemented on European scale using route guidance solutions, particularly taking into account critical sections (bridges, ferries, tunnels, cities)
• Simulation of traffic flows due to different management strategies using economical incentives (price differentiation, etc) and legislative means.

Dissemination and clustering of results

• Effective communication of the objectives and results of the project to road authorities and fleet operators.   Road authorities will need to be convinced of the benefits to them – the business case - of providing their data (and where necessary collecting new data) that is needed for the mapping functions.
• The project will lead towards proposals for a full-scale pilot of the system functionality leading to wide-spread implementation.