Dynamic demand estimation and prediction for traffic urban networks adopting new data sources

Nowadays, new mobility information can be derived from advanced traffic surveillance systems that collect updated traffic measurements, both in fixed locations and over specific corridors or paths. Such recent technological developments point to challenging and promising opportunities that academics and practitioners have only partially explored so far.The paper looks at some of these opportunities within the Dynamic Demand Estimation problem (DDEP). At first, data heterogeneity, accounting for different sets of data providing a wide spatial coverage, has been investigated for the benefit of off-line demand estimation. In an attempt to mimic the current urban networks monitoring, examples of complex real case applications are being reported where route travel times and route choice probabilities from probe vehicles are exploited together with common link traffic measurements.Subsequently, on-line detection of non-recurrent conditions is being recorded, adopting a sequential approach based on an extension of the Kalman Filter theory called Local Ensemble Transformed Kalman Filter (LETKF).Both the off-line and the on-line investigations adopt a simulation approach capable of capturing the highly nonlinear dependence between the travel demand and the traffic measurements through the use of dynamic traffic assignment models. Consequently, the possibility of using collected traffic information is enhanced, thus overcoming most of the limitations of current DDEP approaches found in the literature.     

Optimization-based assisted calibration of traffic simulation models

Use of traffic simulation has increased in recent decades; and this high-fidelity modelling, along with moving vehicle animation, has allowed transportation decisions to be made with better confidence. During this time, traffic engineers have been encouraged to embrace the process of calibration, in which steps are taken to reconcile simulated and field-observed performance. According to international surveys, experts, and conventional wisdom, existing (non-automated) methods of calibration have been difficult or inadequate. There has been extensive research on improved calibration methods, but many of these efforts have not produced the flexibility and practicality required by real-world engineers. With this in mind, a patent-pending (US 61/859,819) architecture for software-assisted calibration was developed to maximize practicality, flexibility, and ease-of-use. This architecture is called SASCO (i.e. Sensitivity Analysis, Self-Calibration, and Optimization). The original optimization method within SASCO was based on “directed brute force” (DBF) searching; performing exhaustive evaluation of alternatives in a discrete, user-defined search space. Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) has also gained favor as an efficient method for optimizing computationally expensive, “black-box” traffic simulations, and was also implemented within SASCO. This paper uses synthetic and real-world case studies to assess the qualities of DBF and SPSA, so they can be applied in the right situations. SPSA was found to be the fastest method, which is important when calibrating numerous inputs, but DBF was more reliable. Additionally DBF was better than SPSA for sensitivity analysis, and for calibrating complex inputs. Regardless of which optimization method is selected, the SASCO architecture appears to offer a new and practice-ready level of calibration efficiency.     

An enhanced SPSA algorithm for the calibration of Dynamic Traffic Assignment models

Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) is an efficient and well established optimization method that approximates gradients from successive objective function evaluations. It is especially attractive for high-dimensional problems and has been successfully applied to the calibration of Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) models. This paper presents an enhanced SPSA algorithm, called Weighted SPSA (W-SPSA), which incorporates the information of spatial and temporal correlation in a traffic network to limit the impact of noise and improve convergence and robustness. W-SPSA appears to outperform the original SPSA algorithm by reducing the noise generated by uncorrelated measurements in the gradient approximation, especially for DTA models of sparsely correlated large-scale networks and a large number of time intervals. Comparisons between SPSA and W-SPSA have been performed through rigorous synthetic tests and the application of W-SPSA for the calibration of real world DTA networks is demonstrated with a case study of the entire expressway network in Singapore.     

Exploiting floating car data for time-dependent Origin–Destination matrices estimation

The study evaluates the added value generated by estimating dynamic demand matrices by information gathered from Floating Car Data (FCD).

Firstly, adopting a large dataset of FCD collected in Rome, Italy, during May 2010, all the monitored trips on a specific district of the city (Eur district) have been collected and analysed in terms of (i) spatial and temporal distribution; (ii) actual route choices and travel times. The data analysis showed that demand data from FCD are usually not suitable to retrieve directly demand matrices, due to a strong dependence of this information from the penetration rate of the monitoring device. Instead, origin–destination travel times and route choice probabilities from FCD are a much more reliable and powerful information with respect to FCD origin–destination flows, since they represent the traffic conditions and behaviors that vehicles experiment along the path.

Thus, several synthetic experiments have been conducted adopting both travel times and route choice probabilities as additional information, with respect to standard link measurements, in the dynamic demand estimation problem. Results demonstrated the strength and robustness associated to these network based data, while link measurements alone are not able to define the real traffic pattern. Adopting both the information of origin–destination travel times and route choice probabilities during the demand estimation process, the spatial and temporal reliability of the estimated demand matrices consistently increases.     

SPSA在公交枢纽内车辆实时调度优化中的应用研究

对公交枢纽内车辆进行实时调度能提高换乘效率,特别是对已进行了调度优化的公交线路,而车辆到达出现延误的情况.根据线路的延迟到达时间和换乘客流量等因素建立了公交枢纽内车辆的实时调度优化模型,提出了基于整个系统费用最小的优化目标函数,并运用随机扰动梯度近似算法（SPSA）对优化模型进行求解,给出了实际应用算例.     

Calibration of traffic flow models using a memetic algorithm

A Memetic Algorithm (MA) for the calibration of microscopic traffic flow simulation models is proposed in this study. The proposed MA includes a combination of genetic and simulated annealing algorithms. The genetic algorithm performs the exploration of the search space and identifies a zone where a possible global solution could be located. After this zone has been found, the simulated annealing algorithm refines the search and locates an optimal set of parameters within that zone. The design and implementation of this methodology seeks to enable the generalized calibration of microscopic traffic flow models. Two different Corridor Simulation (CORSIM) vehicular traffic systems were calibrated for this study. All parameters after the calibration were within reasonable boundaries. The calibration methodology was developed independently of the characteristics of the traffic flow models. Hence, it is easily used for the calibration of any other model. The proposed methodology has the capability to calibrate all model parameters, considering multiple performance measures and time periods simultaneously. A comparison between the proposed MA and the Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) algorithm was provided; results were similar between the two. However, the effort required to fine-tune the MA was considerably smaller when compared to the SPSA. The running time of the MA-based calibration was larger when it was compared to the SPSA running time. The MA still required some knowledge of the model in order to set adequate optimization parameters. The perturbation of the parameters during the mutation process must have been large enough to create a measurable change in the objective function, but not too large to avoid noisy measurements.     

公交枢纽内多线路车辆实时调度优化方法研究

公交枢纽内多线路车辆的实时调度能够提高换乘效率,特别对于已经进行了发车优化的公交线路而某些车辆到达出现延误的情况。根据线路的延迟到达时间和换乘客流量等因素建立了公交枢纽内多线路车辆的实时调度优化问题模型,提出了基于整个系统费用最小的优化目标函数,并运用随机扰动梯度近似算法对问题进行求解。最后结合算例分析了本文方法的应用。     

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微观交通仿真模型在交通系统管理、控制和优化中得到了广泛的应用. 然而微观交通仿真模型参数标定是一项复杂且系统的工作,特别是对于较复杂网络,其参数标定耗时长,且不容易找到最优解. 本文选取了应用较为广泛的VISSIM仿真模型作为基础平台,针对遗传算法（GA）的不足,建立了基于同步扰动随机逼近（SPSA）算法的微观仿真模型参数标定方法,并实现了程序的自动化标定;最后将该方法应用于北京市快速路仿真模型的驾驶员行为参数标定中,以速度的相对误差平方和作为收敛函数,通过对比GA算法,SPSA算法收敛速度快1.7倍,且在标定后的流量检验中相对误差的平方和小0.16,验证了SPSA算法在VISSIM参数标定上的优越性.     

c-SPSA: Cluster-wise simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation algorithm and its application to dynamic origin–destination matrix estimation

The simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) algorithm has been used in the literature for the solution of the dynamic origin–destination (OD) estimation problem. Its main advantage is that it allows quite general formulations of the problem that can include a wide range of sensor measurements. While SPSA is relatively simple to implement, its performance depends on a set of parameters that need to be properly determined. As a result, especially in cases where the gradient of the objective function changes quickly, SPSA may not be as stable and even diverge. A modification of the SPSA algorithm, referred to as c-SPSA, is proposed which applies the simultaneous perturbation approximation of the gradient within a small number of carefully constructed “homogeneous” clusters one at a time, as opposed to all elements at once. The paper establishes the theoretical properties of the new algorithm with an upper bound for the bias of the gradient estimate and shows that it is lower than the corresponding SPSA bias. It also proposes a systematic approach, based on the k-means algorithm, to identify appropriate clusters. The performance of c-SPSA, with alternative implementation strategies, is evaluated in the context of estimating OD flows in an actual urban network. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed c-SPSA algorithm in finding better OD estimates and achieve faster convergence and more robust performance compared to SPSA with fewer overall number of function evaluations.     

SPSA算法在微观交通仿真模型VISSIM参数标定中的应用

微观交通仿真模型在交通系统管理、控制和优化中得到了广泛的应用. 然而微观交通仿真模型参数标定是一项复杂且系统的工作,特别是对于较复杂网络,其参数标定耗时长,且不容易找到最优解. 本文选取了应用较为广泛的VISSIM仿真模型作为基础平台,针对遗传算法（GA）的不足,建立了基于同步扰动随机逼近（SPSA）算法的微观仿真模型参数标定方法,并实现了程序的自动化标定;最后将该方法应用于北京市快速路仿真模型的驾驶员行为参数标定中,以速度的相对误差平方和作为收敛函数,通过对比GA算法,SPSA算法收敛速度快1.7倍,且在标定后的流量检验中相对误差的平方和小0.16,验证了SPSA算法在VISSIM参数标定上的优越性.