Data Fusion-Based Traffic Density Estimation and Prediction

Traffic congestion has become a major challenge in recent years in many countries of the world. One way to alleviate congestion is to manage the traffic efficiently by applying intelligent transportation systems (ITS). One set of ITS technologies helps in diverting vehicles from congested parts of the network to alternate routes having less congestion. Congestion is often measured by traffic density, which is the number of vehicles per unit stretch of the roadway. Density, being a spatial characteristic, is difficult to measure in the field. Also, the general approach of estimating density from location-based measures may not capture the spatial variation in density. To capture the spatial variation better, density can be estimated using both location-based and spatial data sources using a data fusion approach. The present study uses a Kalman filter to fuse spatial and location-based data for the estimation of traffic density. Subsequently, the estimated data are utilized for predicting density to future time intervals using a time-series regression model. The models were estimated and validated using both field and simulated data. Both estimation and prediction models performed well, despite the challenges arising from heterogeneous traffic flow conditions prevalent in India.