Techno-Economic Design and Implementation of Vehicular Access Control

Traffic management and control is pivotal to maintaining orderliness in corporate organizations. The effective management and control of traffic will lead to improved security. As a result, investments in security take a good percentage of their expenses, which necessitates improved security solutions at reduced costs. Most corporate organizations adopt the use of a boom barrier, which is an improved version of the traditional or manual barrier system (MBS). However, the boom barrier uses a remote controller with limited capability in terms of operating range and security level. The running cost is also key in choosing the system to be adopted for security purposes. This study developed a techno-economic design and implementation of a vehicular access control system using the Bells University of Technology, Ota, Nigeria, as a case study. The study first designed a control system module by exploring the capabilities of the loop detector, Arduino, Raspberry pi, four-channel relay, radio frequency identification (RFID) card and scanner, and a camera. The control system module was then integrated into the boom barrier for seamless control to realize the boom barrier access control system (BACS). The paper developed economic models for the MBS and the BACS, which were simulated using MATLAB to justify the need for the adoption of the developed BACS. A sensitivity analysis was performed to demonstrate the robustness of the developed cost models. The functionality tests on the developed BACS showed that the system is characterized by an average response time, opening time, delay time, and closing time of 5.06 seconds, 6.12 seconds, 30.02 seconds, and 6.02 seconds, respectively. Results on costs showed that the BACS is cost-effective with an initial cost of $7,650 compared to $15,223 for the MBS. The BACS is also more resilient to annual increments than the MBS. A cost-benefit analysis revealed an annual increase in the cost-benefit over the entire system lifespan. The study has demonstrated the viability of BACS in vehicular access control considering both the ease of operation and systems costs.