Yisheng Lv

Traffic Flow Prediction With Big Data: A Deep Learning Approach

Accurate and timely traffic flow information is important for the successful deployment of intelligent transportation systems. Over the last few years, traffic data have been exploding, and we have truly entered the era of big data for transportation. Existing traffic flow prediction methods mainly use shallow traffic prediction models and are still unsatisfying for many real-world applications. This situation inspires us to rethink the traffic flow prediction problem based on deep architecture models with big traffic data. In this paper, a novel deep-learning-based traffic flow prediction method is proposed, which considers the spatial and temporal correlations inherently. A stacked autoencoder model is used to learn generic traffic flow features, and it is trained in a greedy layerwise fashion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a deep architecture model is applied using autoencoders as building blocks to represent traffic flow features for prediction. Moreover, experiments demonstrate that the proposed method for traffic flow prediction has superior performance.

A Game-Engine-Based Platform for Modeling and Computing Artificial Transportation Systems

A game-engine-based modeling and computing platform for artificial transportation systems (ATSs) is introduced. As an important feature, the artificial-population module (APM) is described in both its macroscopic and microcosmic aspects. In this module, each person is designed similarly to the actors in games. The traffic-simulation module (TSM) is another important module, which takes advantage of Delta3D to construct a 3-D simulation environment. All mobile actors are also managed by this module with the help of the dynamic-actor-layer (DAL) mechanism that is offered by Delta3D. The platform is designed as agent-oriented, modularized, and distributed. Both modules, together with components that are responsible for message processing, rules, network, and interactions, are organized by the game manager (GM) in a flexible architecture. With the help of the network component, the platform can be constructed to implement a distributed simulation. Finally, four experiments are introduced to show functions and features of the platform.

Traffic signal timing via deep reinforcement learning

In this paper, we propose a set of algorithms to design signal timing plans via deep reinforcement learning. The core idea of this approach is to set up a deep neural network (DNN) to learn the Q-function of reinforcement learning from the sampled traffic state/control inputs and the corresponding traffic system performance output. Based on the obtained DNN, we can find the appropriate signal timing policies by implicitly modeling the control actions and the change of system states. We explain the possible benefits and implementation tricks of this new approach. The relationships between this new approach and some existing approaches are also carefully discussed.

Parallel Traffic Management System and Its Application to the 2010 Asian Games

Field data are important for convenient daily travel of urban residents, reducing traffic congestion and accidents, pursuing a low-carbon environment-friendly sustainable development strategy, and meeting the extra peak traffic demand of large sporting events or large business activities, etc. To meet the field data demand during the 2010 Asian (Para) Games held in Guangzhou, China, based on the novel Artificial systems, Computational experiments, and Parallel execution (ACP) approach, the Parallel Traffic Management System (PtMS) was developed. It successfully helps to achieve smoothness, safety, efficiency, and reliability of public transport management during the two games, supports public traffic management and decision making, and helps enhance the public traffic management level from experience-based policy formulation and manual implementation to scientific computing-based policy formulation and implementation. The PtMS represents another new milestone in solving the management difficulty of real-world complex systems.

Real-Time Highway Traffic Accident Prediction Based on the k-Nearest Neighbor Method

The occurrence of a highway traffic accident is associated with the short-term turbulence of traffic flow. In this paper, we investigate how to identify the traffic accident potential by using the k-nearest neighbor method with real-time traffic data. This is the first time the k-nearest neighbor method is applied in real-time highway traffic accident prediction. Traffic accident precursors and their calculation time slice duration are determined before classifying traffic patterns. The experimental results show the k-nearest neighbor method outperforming the conventional C-means clustering method.

Social media based transportation research: the state of the work and the networking

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the use of social media data as important traffic information sources. In this paper, we review social media based transportation research with social network analysis methods.We summarize main research topics in this field, and report collaboration patterns at levels of researchers, institutions, and countries, respectively. Finally, some future research directions are identified.

A deep learning based approach for traffic data imputation

Traffic data is a fundamental component for applications and researches in transportation systems. However, real traffic data collected from loop detectors or other channels often include missing data which affects the relative applications and researches. This paper proposes an approach based on deep learning to impute the missing traffic data. The proposed approach treats the traffic data including observed data and missing data as a whole data item and restores the complete data with the deep structural network. The deep learning approach can discover the correlations contained in the data structure by a layer-wise pre-training and improve the imputation accuracy by conducting a fine-tuning afterwards. We analyze the imputation patterns that can be realized with the proposed approach and conduct a series of experiments. The results show that the proposed approach can keep a stable error under different traffic data missing rate. Deep learning is promising in the field of traffic data imputation.

Urban Rail Emergency Response Using Pedestrian Dynamics

An urban rail-transit emergency response system is developed based on existing artificial systems by analyzing human behaviors from a pedestrian dynamics viewpoint. This enables necessary computational experiments on the systems that can ultimately lead to the establishment of a database of emergency response strategies and schemes.

Generating artificial popullations for traffic microsimulation

Travel demand is derived from peoples participation in daily activities scattered in time and space. Traffic microsimulation starts by generating individuals to participate in activities. In this paper, we propose a framework called Artificial Population Systems (APS) in order to automatically generate artificial populations for traffic microsimulation. Different from the conventional approach using empirical data to generate synthetic populations for the base year, our APS framework can generate artificial populations which evolve with time and space. So, with artificial populations, we will get more reasonable traffic demand forecast and analytical results in long term traffic microsimulation.

Modeling and analyzing transportation systems based on ACP approach

The ACP (Artificial societies, Computational experiments and Parallel execution) approach has provided us an opportunity to look into new methods in addressing transportation problems from new perspectives. In this paper, we present our works and results of applying ACP approach in modeling and analyzing transportation system, especially carrying out computational experiments based on artificial transportation systems. Two aspects in the modeling process are analyzed. The first is growing artificial transportation system from bottom up using agent-based technologies. The second is modeling environment impacts in simple-is-consistent principle. Finally, two computational experiments are carried out on one specific ATS, Jinan ATS, and numerical results are presented to illustrate the applications of our method.