Operational requirements
The system will provide a mechanism, whereby:
- Cars traveling on the major highways pay a fee that is proportional to the distance traveled;
- The fee charged should be electronically sent to the government records on a real-time basis without any delay;
- The system must not create delays which might result in unnecessary traffic jams;
- The system must run automatically without any subsidy;
- The system must adopt any car make and model without requiring any form of modification by the mechanic or the car manufacturer.
Maintenance concept
The system should meet the maintainability goals and the maintainability requirements. The key ingredients should establish the key design objectives and the basis for the maintenance concept criteria. The system should minimize logistics delay time with a quick repair, turnaround time, and supply delivery time. The selection of the system equipment should not require extensive technical logistic information (Benjamin & Wolter, 2005).
The system should ensure high operational availability. The system should utilize the vendors’ repair facilities and support resources in order to minimize special tool requirements that are cost-effective. The system should also optimize fault localization and fault monitoring capabilities in order to support the maintainability requirements. The removal and replacement procedures of the system should be performable by the operator in the field (Benjamin & Wolter, 2005).
Operational and maintenance flows
The system will be automated but closely monitored by the police officers to prevent vandalism and to curb traffic offenders. The system will be serviced on a regular basis, and repairs will be made with immediate effect. The system will automatically report faults and failures on a real-time basis. A standby engineer will overlook the operations and proper maintenance by the system vendor.
Repair policies
The system designers should be locally sourced to reduce delays during system breakdown, repair or servicing. The system hardware should be locally available. For the system software, the shelf software solutions should be readily available. The coexisting hardware technology should meet the performance requirements of the system (Benjamin & Wolter, 2005).
Qualitative effectiveness factors
The qualitative effects of the system will depend on several factors. This will include:
- The ability of the system to reduce congestions in the major highway;
- The ability of the system to positively identify the vehicles on the highway;
- The compatibility of the different subsystems that make up the system;
- The ability of the system to give correct figures on the collected revenue and tarrying the number of vehicles according to the frequency of road use;
- The maintainability and reliability of the system.
Specific resource requirements
The system will be composed of two subsystems: the road pricing subsystem and the packaging system. The road pricing system will include transport specialists, police officers, software engineers, civil engineers and hardware experts. The packaging subsystem will include the manufacturing experts, packaging suppliers, and supply managers.
Hardware
The hardware will comprise vehicle presence detectors. These will be sensors that detect a vehicle in the traffic lane. The hardware should be able to perform the maximum in all weather conditions, and should not be affected by the absence of light, especially at night.
The system will also comprise the vehicle identification system. The hardware will identify vehicles and must have high levels of reliability. The system must work well in all weather conditions and should also be equally sensitive at night. It must be cost-sensitive and its pair should be mountable in the vehicle. It should be secure and hard to interfere with.
Software
This will include a general-purpose database system for the payment collection process. There should also be a real-time system that will respond when called upon by the vehicle identification hardware. There should also be a real-time charging system. The last but equally important software will be the database management system that will keep a good track of records without delay or loss. Data stored in the database will include offender tracking records and fee collection records.
Reference
Benjamin , S. B., & Wolter , F. J. (2005). Systems Engineering and Analysis. London: Prentice Hall.