Enhancing the Value of an Incidents Database with an Interactive Visualization Tool

The growing capabilities of computational tools and the advent of multiple data providing systems have increased the needs and ability to process large sets of microscopic data. Since the data are not directly suited for analysis or modeling, they are often stocked without further question, while they could shine a new light on critical traffic phenomena such as congestion. This research is a spin-off of a project on the modelling of travel time reliability on highway corridors. The project relies on floating cars data but has also led to the exploration of historical incidents datasets that required various pre-processing steps. A visualization tool was developed using Microsoft Excel in an innovative way. This paper reports on the development of this tool that provides some insight into the analytical potentialities of the incident databases. Four years of data are examined and converted into usable information through cross-examination and interactivity.