Monitoring Video-Based Visibility Detection Method and System for Highways in China

In view of the urgent demands for visibility detection, alarm and emergency disposal on highways in China, a monitoring video-based method for highway visibility detection was proposed. In this method, images of fixed-distance reference objects were first extracted from monitoring camera images, and then candidate visibility values were calculated based on greyscale image distortion analysis on these images. The final visibility result was computed by applying data fusion on the candidate visibility values. Based on this method, a visibility detection, alarm and emergency disposal system was developed. By utilizing the calculated visibility values, this system provides support for intelligent transportation tasks, such as visibility alarm, emergency disposal, traffic control, and information publication, both locally and globally. Experimental results show that the average detection error of this method is 13.4%, thus meeting the accuracy and performance requirements of highway visibility detection. Moreover, this method and the corresponding system can fully reuse the monitoring camera electromechanical systems distributed along the highways; therefore they are suitable for application in operation management and efficiency improvement works on highways in China.