Towards road traffic management with forecasting on wall displays

Road traffic control centers are of vital importance to modern cities. Interviews with controllers in two such centers identified the need to incorporate the visualization of results from predictive traffic models with real traffic, to help operators choose among different interventions on the network. We explore this idea in a prototype that runs on a wall display, and supports direct touch and input from workstations and mobile devices. Apart from basic functionality to manage the current traffic such as changing traffic light duration or speed limits, the prototype incorporates traffic simulations for forecasting results of possible actions, highlighting their differences to current traffic. Based on needs identified in our interviews, we offer two techniques that visually combine simulated and real situations, taking advantage of the large display space: multiple independent views and DragMagic, a variation of magic lenses. A preliminary laboratory experiment suggests that both techniques are viable design options, even for monitoring several simulations and areas of interest, contrary to expectations from previous work. However DragMagics are easier to master. An informal feedback session with our experts showed promising early feedback.