Get a road of this

"I was on the faculty at Louisiana State in the 1990s, and later watched how hard my colleagues worked to dynamically plan and adjust routes during the Katrina evacuation," civil engineering professor Darcy Bullock told Homeland1.

When the wind stopped, Bullock, who's now at Purdue University, devised a method that uses the pervasive Bluetooth signals from cell phones and other wireless devices to constantly update how long it takes vehicles to travel from one point to another on freeways or major surface arteries. The system works also for pedestrians navigating, say, slow airport security lines.

Bullock's Bluetooth technique improves on the limitations of existing traffic-monitoring technologies.

"Collecting travel time is very difficult to do with fixed infrastructure such as loop detectors that only measure spot speeds and extrapolate segment travel time," Bullock said. "Our technique provides direct measurement of a sample of the population that we believe provides a much more robust indicator of travel time."

The Bluetooth system potentially represents a low-cost leap in technology that provides traffic data for everything from the speed of the morning commute to the best routes available during emergency evacuations.

"It's critical to monitor travel time to provide accurate emergency travel information to decision-makers, the press and ultimately the public for making informed evacuation decisions," Bullock said.

Bullock's method works by picking up unique identifying addresses from Bluetooth components embedded in consumer electronics.

"Since each Bluetooth device has its own distinct digital signature, travel time can be tracked by detectors installed at intersections or along highways and other locations that measure the time it takes for a Bluetooth device to traverse that distance," Bullock said. Travelers can then access travel-time information using the same portable Bluetooth devices that make the system possible.

The new Bluetooth travel-time procedures detect and record Media Access Control, or MAC, identification signals, every time a Bluetooth device passes a detector.

Instead of the spotty data provided by current traffic-tracking systems, Bluetooth yields 24-hour feedback on traffic flow, information that can be used for evacuation design and operation decisions.

Normally, Bluetooth technology connects and exchanges information for cell phone hands-free headsets, wireless keyboards, Internet access for personal digital assistants, and wireless networks for laptops and personal computers.