With the progress of highway construction, Inner Mongolia's road network has developed from a single road section to a network like structure. However, due to various reasons such as investment, construction, and management, both the central and western regions and the eastern regions of the road network have not been able to achieve network connectivity. Only the road sections managed by the highway company have achieved network toll collection, established corresponding communication platforms, and video surveillance systems, which are also independent of each other and cannot achieve image resource sharing. In order to quickly build a network monitoring information platform for the whole region with the Ministry of Transport and other provinces (regions, cities)

一、Background

With the progress of highway construction, the Inner Mongolia road network has developed from single - section roads to a network. However, due to various reasons such as investment, construction, and management, neither the road networks in the central - western region nor the eastern region have achieved regional networking. Only the sections operated and managed by the Highway Company have achieved networked toll collection, established corresponding communication platforms, and their video surveillance systems are independent of each other, making it impossible to share image resources. To quickly build a networked monitoring information platform in the whole region that is connected with the Ministry of Transport and other provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), accelerate the construction of the networked toll collection system for the region's highway system, and promote the gradual and orderly implementation of all aspects of the networked construction of the region's highway electromechanical system, the Inner Mongolia Road Administration Corps implemented the project according to the principle of unified planning. ZhongShengYiHua won the bid as the solution provider for this project due to its good reputation over the years and the strong technical advantages of its software platform.

二、Challenges

There are many difficulties and challenges in the operation and management of the Inner Mongolia road network: Due to the lack of a management institution responsible for the regional networking work, the relevant systems and technical standards for networked toll collection, networked communication, and networked monitoring have not been formed in a timely manner, which has restricted the progress of the networking work.

1、Inefficient Toll Collection: Since networked toll collection has not been realized, mainline toll stations need to be built between highway sections constructed by different investment entities. This not only leads to a huge waste of construction funds and an increase in operating costs but also requires vehicles traveling on the road network to enter and exit mainline toll stations multiple times to complete processes such as card collection and payment. This not only reduces the traffic efficiency of vehicles but also fails to meet the requirements of the country in terms of toll management, energy conservation, and emission reduction.

2、Poor Information Sharing and Management: Since the entire road network has not achieved networked management, information is not shared among sections, management is not unified, and travel services are inadequate. This has affected the improvement of management levels in aspects such as operation monitoring, emergency response, and travel services across the entire road network.

3、Incompatible Communication Systems: Due to the inconsistent construction standards, scales, formats, and manufacturers of communication systems in sections under the jurisdiction of different operating entities, the communication systems of relevant sections have not been connected to date, causing difficulties in networking in the central - western region and even across the entire region.

  Facing the current situation of road network operation and management, where subordinate platforms are independent of each other, front - end device brands are not unified, heterogeneous management platforms are diverse, network conditions are complex, and bandwidth is limited, the ZhongShengYiHua project team also encountered many difficulties and challenges during the implementation process. Through continuous modification and optimization, they achieved the sharing, unified management, and unified scheduling of video resource information, providing technical support for the comprehensive decision - making and command of the road network center.

三、Technical Advantages

1、Multi - brand Interconnection and Resource Integration and Sharing:

    ZhongShengYiHua connected nearly 3000 front - end devices from platforms such as Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview, Wuhan Micro - Tech, and ZTE Smart through the VMS gateway in a platform - to - platform docking manner. The VMS gateway then forwarded the front - end code streams it obtained to the VMS streaming media server through the independently developed VSIP protocol. Finally, a central management server was used to perform unified directory - based management of all streaming media servers, realizing the interconnection, resource integration, and sharing of multiple heterogeneous management platforms.

2、Software Decoding for Wall - mounted Display: 

   he wall - mounted display system in the road network monitoring center uses ZhongShengYiHua's "Digital Virtual Matrix" pure software platform as the core control unit, which cooperates with Huawei's hardware carriers to manage 32 large - screen displays. It realizes functions such as high - definition and standard - definition video wall - mounted display, arbitrary screen segmentation display, single - picture layout rotation, and the entire large - screen pre - plan rotation. Due to limited network conditions, image freezing occurred during system operation. ZhongShengYiHua modified the access libraries of various platforms, re - defined the decoding method, updated the decoding algorithm, and used a smooth display mechanism to balance picture quality under low - bandwidth conditions and avoid image freezing.

3、Forwarding Priority Scheduling:

   Since the bandwidth of the entire road network is limited, when the bandwidth is insufficient, the platform can perform orderly management of video forwarding according to customer levels, ensuring the priority access of high - privilege users to images and normal image browsing.

4、High - performance Multi - concurrent Service:

   ZhongShengYiHua's VMS gateway supports the simultaneous access of multiple platforms such as Hikvision and Uniview. A single server supports the access management of more than 1000 front - end devices and 64 - channel concurrent image access.

5、Decoding Performance Optimization:

    For non - standard code - stream images from some subordinate platforms, problems such as slow wall - mounted display are likely to occur during decoding and display. By updating the non - standard code - stream algorithm and modifying the access library, normal wall - mounted display of images is ensured. In addition, for front - end devices that are offline, the system adds a video loss prompt on the large - screen and a video recovery mode. When the device comes online, the large - screen automatically restores the image.

6、Image Enhancement: 

   Due to the sometimes harsh weather conditions in Inner Mongolia, such as rain, fog, and sandstorms, operators in the monitoring center can use back - end graphics/image processing methods such as contrast enhancement and noise suppression to eliminate blurring, improve image clarity, and enhance the viewing quality of the picture for poor - quality images.

7、High - performance Video on Demand: 

   Under good network conditions, the system provides second - level response for playback: the maximum response time for the client to retrieve and locate by time and enter video playback does not exceed 1 second; it supports video playback at multiple speeds, with adjustable speeds from 1 to 16 times; the client software provides an automatic network reconnection mechanism, which can automatically retrieve the original video playback content after the network fault is restored, and the reconnection time is no more than 3 seconds.

8、Accident Video Upload: 

   When a traffic accident occurs at a toll station or on a certain section of the road, the road network monitoring and command center needs to record the real - time monitoring images and upload them to the center for evidence preservation. The platform supports uploading local recordings to the central server and can upload the required recordings to the central management server for unified storage at regular times, fixed points, and at a fixed speed based on the locally saved recordings.

9、Rapid Event Retrieval: 

   When investigating a traffic event, the conventional event search method consumes a lot of time and energy for users, and there may be omissions due to visual fatigue. ZhongShengYiHua's platform uses a structured video data storage engine to perform slice analysis on historical image information. The system automatically divides a certain video file into n parts and displays a still picture (snapshot) of the start position of each 1/n segment of the video on the screen. By comparing the changes in these pictures, users can determine in which video segments the event occurred. Users can re - define one snapshot as the start time and another snapshot as the end time, and 20 more snapshots will be generated within the new time period. In this way, users can quickly discard useless video files, quickly locate the video recording files related to the event, and play them carefully to obtain case clues.