Average Daily Intensity, for short IMD, is a measure primarily used in transportation planning, transportation engineering, and retail location selection. It is the total volume of vehicle traffic on a highway during a year divided by 365 days. The IMD is a simple but useful measure because it determines how busy that road is.

The IMD is the standard measure for vehicle traffic loading on a section of highway and the basis for most decisions related to transportation planning or environmental risks of road transportation-related pollution.[1]​[2]​.

One of the most important uses of the IMD is to determine the budget for road maintenance and improvement.

For example, in the United States, the amount of federal funding a state will receive is related to the total traffic measured on its road network. Every year on June 15, every state in the United States submits a road gauging system report. In the report, the AMD is converted into vehicle miles traveled (VMT). VMT is the IMD multiplied by the length of the road segment. To determine the amount of traffic a state has, the average daily intensity cannot be added for all road segments, since an AMD is a "Ratio (mathematical)" ratio. The VMT is added and used as an indicator of the amount of traffic a state has. Formulas are used for federal funding to include VMT and other highway statistics.

In the United Kingdom the IMD is one of several traffic measures used by local road authorities and the Department for Transport to forecast maintenance needs and expenditure.[4]​.

To measure IMD on individual road segments, traffic data is collected using automated traffic gauging points, either by engaging an observer to record vehicle counts or by using estimated counts from GPS data providers, among other methods. There are two different techniques for measuring IMDs for road segments with automated traffic counters:

While this method provides the most accurate IMD, installing and maintaining the continuous counting station method is expensive. Most public agencies can only monitor a very small percentage of the road using this method.

For years when a traffic count is not recorded, the AMD is often estimated by applying a factor called a growth factor. Growth factors are determined statistically from historical road section data. If there is no historical data, growth factors for similar road sections are used.