A New Multimodal and Spatio-Temporal Dataset for Traffic Control: Development, Analysis, and Potential Applications

Multimodal data, which includes various data formats such as image, video, text, and sensor data, is essential for urban traffic management. The lack of proven multimodal transportation data has been a significant challenge for urban planners, leading to biased or incomplete estimates of travel demand, mode choice, and network performance. Multimodal data integration offers a valuable resource for understanding and optimizing traffic control and management. However, the heterogeneity of the data, various kinds of noise, alignment of modalities, and techniques to handle missing data are some of the challenges that arise. This paper presents a novel multimodal dataset which is the first of its kind, its scraped from England Highways, incorporating speed, flow, and camera images for the M60, M25, and M1 motorways. The dataset provides a comprehensive view of traffic behavior at specific junctions, enabling detailed analysis and real-world applications. By integrating previously disparate data sources, this dataset offers a valuable resource for understanding and optimizing traffic control and management. The paper outlines the dataset's development, including the gathering of speed and flow data, and the use of image scraping techniques to capture CCTV images. The potential applications of the dataset for traffic control, planning, and optimization are also discussed. Overall, this multimodal dataset represents a significant contribution to the field, with implications for the development of advanced traffic management systems and the improvement of transportation infrastructure.