Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2011

Abstract

This paper presents a method for estimating missing real-time traffic volumes on a road network using both historical and real-time traffic data. The method was developed to address urban transportation networks where a non-negligible subset of the network links do not have real-time link volumes, and where that data is needed to populate other real-time traffic analytics. Computation is split between an offline calibration and a real-time estimation phase. The offline phase determines link-to-link splitting probabilities for traffic flow propagation that are subsequently used in real-time estimation. The real-time procedure uses current traffic data and is efficient enough to scale to full city-wide deployments. Simulation results on a medium-sized test network demonstrate the accuracy of the method and its robustness to missing data and variability in the data that is available. For traffic demands with a coefficient of variation as high as 40%, and a real-time feed in which as much as 60% of links lack data, we find the percentage root mean square error of link volume estimates ranges from 3.9% to 18.6%. We observe that the use of real-time data can reduce this error by as much as 20%.

Keywords

bilevel programming, OD matrix estimation, real-time traffic analytics, traffic equilibrium

Discipline

Databases and Information Systems | Transportation

Research Areas

Intelligent Systems and Optimization

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological

Volume

45

Issue

7

First Page

1062

Last Page

1079

ISSN

0191-2615

Identifier

10.1016/j.trb.2011.05.024

Publisher

Elsevier

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trb.2011.05.024

Download

Share

COinS