Digital Twin-Based Highway Management and Control System Solution

Application Scenario

Digital Twin-Based Highway Management and Control System Solution

As a vital artery of the national economy, highways are key infrastructure supporting economic growth and promoting regional integration. In the digital era, traditional highway management models face unprecedented challenges: fragmented data, delayed perception, and slow response have become increasingly prominent. Under the guidance of the “Strong Transportation Nation” strategy, building a new generation of intelligent and digital management and control systems has become an inevitable trend.

Leveraging deep insights into industry needs, based on Sefonsoft self-developed SDC ME Digital Twin Visualization Platform, provides a one-stop, zero-code visualization development environment. With graphical, process-driven data modeling capabilities, the platform enables rapid construction of a dynamic mirror of the entire elements and full lifecycle of physical highways, achieving unified, network-wide management of highway operations.

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Industry Challenges

Smart Highway Technical Standards Yet to Be Established

A comprehensive technical standard system for smart highways needs to be developed, covering advanced technologies, key challenges, and potential development models across construction, management, maintenance, operation, and service stages. Alongside technological innovation, a transformation in management systems is also required to align the pace of relevant departments—management, construction, operation, and maintenance—ensuring coordinated actions that collectively drive smart highway development. This process should be continuously optimized and refined through practical application.

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Data Acquisition and Traffic State Perception Capabilities to Be Enhanced

Building upon existing highway electromechanical systems, it is necessary to further improve information collection and perception systems for people, vehicles, roads, and the environment. By fully leveraging emerging technologies, the quality, scope, precision, and granularity of perception can be significantly improved, forming a digital perception standard system for smart highways that covers all elements and the full lifecycle. This will strengthen the ability to capture and interpret global operational characteristics of highways, enabling substantial breakthroughs in control, emergency response, decision-making, and service capabilities.

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Highway Data Deep Application Capabilities to Be Enhanced

First, data should be shared and transmitted throughout the planning, design, construction, management, operation, maintenance, and service processes of highways to enable multi-stakeholder collaboration, multi-business integration, and comprehensive application. Second, a digital middle platform and cloud-based business processing should be leveraged to achieve large-scale utilization and resource optimization of data. Third, indicator libraries, model libraries, inference libraries, and other repositories should be established for various business domains, forming a closed-loop data flow of “Data – Information – Knowledge – Intelligence.” This will enable refined management, intelligent evaluation, prediction, and decision-making for highway operations, ultimately meeting the smart highway objectives of being “perceptive, adaptive, well-governed, and capable of continuous learning.”

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Highway Emergency Management Capabilities to Be Strengthened

By utilizing fine-grained data from individual terminals and dynamic traffic information collected from intelligent roadside stations, an operational monitoring and regulatory system should be built to express road network status at the lane level. Based on high-precision positioning and mapping, lane-level monitoring and navigation services for emergency rescue vehicles can be achieved, ensuring precision in rescue operations. This will also enable efficient matching of emergency response plans, rapid simulation, and intelligent evaluation of incidents. The ultimate goal is to build a proactive safety management system integrating highway operational status analysis, early abnormal event warnings, scientific decision-making for incident handling, and rapid emergency response.

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Traffic Information Service Channels to Be Expanded

In addition to existing dissemination methods such as variable message signs, variable speed limit signs, and service area display terminals, new channels should be developed, including electronic maps, mobile applications, and digital signage. By aligning with travelers’ modes of travel and tiered information service needs, a hybrid highway information service system—combining both companion-based and centralized service models—can be established. This system will proactively push and deliver differentiated real-time traffic conditions, incident information, and service updates.

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Our Methodology

Traffic Operation Status Digital Twin

Based on digital twin scenarios for highways, lane-level real-time traffic condition data is integrated to support overlay display of traffic incidents, facility status, weather conditions, construction and maintenance activities, and service area operational status, along with full-scene roaming. Operational indicators such as traffic volume, average speed, and congestion index are statistically analyzed to provide managers with a “single-screen overview” of all elements, offering real-time decision-making support for highway management.

Vehicle Tracking Digital Twin

Leveraging highway video recognition data, lane-level digital twin scenarios map and display vehicle type, license plate, trajectory, and other related data, enabling vehicle classification queries and profile building. In the event of a traffic incident, the system can retrieve the involved vehicle, review its trajectory through video playback, and achieve comprehensive digital twin-based vehicle tracking.Leveraging highway video recognition data, lane-level digital twin scenarios map and display vehicle type, license plate, trajectory, and other related data, enabling vehicle classification queries and profile building. In the event of a traffic incident, the system can retrieve the involved vehicle, review its trajectory through video playback, and achieve comprehensive digital twin-based vehicle tracking.Leveraging highway video recognition data, lane-level digital twin scenarios map and display vehicle type, license plate, trajectory, and other related data, enabling vehicle classification queries and profile building. In the event of a traffic incident, the system can retrieve the involved vehicle, review its trajectory through video playback, and achieve comprehensive digital twin-based vehicle tracking.

Highway Static Data Digital Twin

Focusing on traffic equipment such as gantries, cameras, variable message signs, lane signs, as well as major traffic facilities including interchanges, toll stations, and service areas, the system constructs digital twin models of road assets. It supports statistical queries, data previews, model calibration, and model replacement for these digital twin asset models, enhancing road asset management and control capabilities.

Traffic Facility Control Digital Twin

Based on individual digital twin models of variable message signs, cameras, variable lane devices, speed limit devices, and other highway facilities, the system enables information release on message boards, real-time monitoring of video feeds, and IoT-based device control through the digital twin platform. This achieves remote, visualized operation and coordinated control of critical facilities.

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Implementation Value

Building Safer Highways

Focusing on digital acquisition and intelligent perception of highway infrastructure, vehicle-road information interaction, and proactive road traffic safety warnings, the system enables pre-incident alerts, in-incident prompts, and post-incident active rescue. Through intelligent de-icing and snow removal, driving guidance in fog zones, and night-time driving guidance, it ensures safe vehicle passage under adverse weather conditions, achieving near all-weather highway accessibility.

Building Smoother Highways

Focusing on traffic efficiency, highway management is upgraded from the segment level to the lane level. Safety warnings and intelligent control services are provided for merging/diverging zones, shared alignment sections, and high-traffic segments, enhancing road smoothness and overall network operational efficiency.

Building Innovative Highways

Leveraging technologies such as 5G coverage and BeiDou high-precision positioning, the system fully integrates advanced technologies into highway construction, management, maintenance, operation, and service. This enables the establishment of a comprehensive smart highway technical standard and management system, driving all-round, high-quality development of smart highways.