如果有必要是发明之母，那么沮丧就必须是其父亲。对于华盛顿特区的高速公路建设项目经理Javier Devesa来说，他对与DOT的手动计划和提交通道封闭请求的挫败感激发了他发明更好的方法。

结果是Nodum，该软件服务于8月12日启动，旨在帮助总承包商优化封闭车道的封闭 - 延伸计划并最大程度地减少持续时间。它还旨在帮助他们在交通加重的情况下帮助他们完成项目，并在公众方面，帮助驾驶员和物流经理不仅避免绕道18luck官网和封闭，而且还可以查看将来计划的何时何地。

“Nodum is the Latin word for knot, or intersection,” Devesa says. “I thought it was a catchy name … it’s like 100 ways to untie a knot, and there are 100 ways to plan lane closures. Everything is like a knot. Everything is a mess.”

Devesa says he decided to create an algorithm and designed it in an Excel spreadsheet. “Then we built a software around it,” he says. He tested it as he worked on jobs in Dallas; Ft. Worth, Texas; and Washington, D.C. Now the software has been three years in development and has led to the founding of an independent company, Nodum Traffic SL, which has a team of seven founders, who are engineers, software developers and lawyers. It does not yet have a customer, though, although Devesa says he is in negotiations with an unnamed prospect.

Nodum’s primary goal is to get the optimal schedule for traffic closures and detours in a highway construction or maintenance project, reducing duration and cost. Its algorithm starts with the constraints set by the DOT on disruptions and then applies those to the contractor’s proposed traffic management plan. It detects conflicts or possible congestions and suggests practical alternatives to get to the most efficient schedule.

Nodum’s publicly available, map-based web interface provides a live status view of traffic, like Google Maps or Waze, but goes beyond that to show future closures scheduled to happen. “Nodum is not predicting traffic based on statistics. Nodum knows the traffic management schedule from the general contractor and shows it in the map,” Devesa says.

他设想Nodum的数据库成长，以捕获全国各地承包商的交通中断计划，并以其徽标为标志，并作为公众提供免费服务。