Project Info

Project Request Date: 11/06/2017
Project Requested By: Nikiforos Stamatiadis, PhD,PE
Principle Investigator: William Staats

Initial Inquiry

(1) I am trying to get a feel of the amount of data needed to get an IHSDM file going. I have an Autocad file that provides the horizontal and vertical alignments; unfortunately as separate files. However, I can get them into one file with the x,y,z coordinates (if it will be useful).

(2) Can you help me with the following issues?

1. Do you know if i can include in the software IHSDM the existing Stopping Sight Distance?
2. Do you know if i can include in the software IHSDM the type of accident (swerving, deflection, collision, impact etc… I don’t know if these are the exact words)?
3. Do you know if i can include in the software IHSDM the superelevation diagram with an xml file (as horizontal and vertical alignment)??

Project Write-up

(1) To get the alignments into IHSDM, I used the translator option within InRoads to export the alignments as .landxml files. Since you have the vertical and horizontal alignments as separate files, you should be able to convert them to .landxml separately and open both in IHSDM as separate projects. Then you can copy the data table from one project and paste it into the other project so you have both the vertical and horizontal alignments in the same project.

When I used IHSDM, I manually input all other data besides the horizontal and vertical alignments. This included lane widths, shoulder widths, cross-slopes on tangent sections, roadside hazard ratings, driveway density, AADT, design speeds, and any other roadway attributes that need to be included with your specific project. These attributes are fairly simple to input once the alignments are imported into IHSDM. Everything in IHSDM is based on stationing rather than milepoints, so the only tricky part is making sure to accurately convert between milepoints and stations if your other data is referenced using milepoints.

(2) 

1. The crash prediction module in IHSDM does not have a variable for stopping sight distance.
2. As far as I know, IHSDM only allows a user to categorize historic crashes based on their severity (fatal, injury, and property damage only), amount of vehicles involved (single/multi), and relation to an intersection. The distribution of types of crashes you mentioned can be input in the “Crash Distribution Data Set”. IHSDM has a preset distribution of crash types based on roadway types. You can change the crash distributions yourself for each roadway type by using the “Administration Tool”. Open the administration tool and Highlight the entry under “Crash Distribution Data Sets”, then click edit. Then you can see the different crash types IHSDM includes for every highway type, and change the percentages of each crash type to better fit your study area. I have attached a couple pictures to help you navigate to the locations in the Administration Tool I mentioned.
3. I do not think IHSDM allows for users to import superelevation information. I believe the program automatically computes superelevation in curves based on the “E Max” value you choose when you model a new alignment.

Data Provided