Dynamic thresholds for the resilience assessment of road traffic networks to wildfires

The severe effects of extreme wildfire events in recent years have shown that the fire suppression approach is not enough to solve the problem. An alternative to dealing with this issue is to accept the impossibility of eliminating wildfire hazards and focus on preparing systems to be more resilient. However, existing decision-making tools...

Efficient evaluation of stochastic traffic flow models using Gaussian process approximation

This paper studies a Gaussian process approximation for a class of stochastic traffic flow models. It can be used to efficiently and accurately evaluate the joint (in the spatial and temporal sense) distribution of vehicle-density distributions in road traffic networks of arbitrary topology. The Gaussian approximation follows, via a scaling...

Game theoretic lane change strategy for cooperative vehicles under perfect information

Lane change maneuvers are main causes of traffic turbulence at highway bottlenecks. We propose a dynamic game framework to derive the system optimum strategy for a network of cooperative vehicles interacting at a merging bottleneck. Cooperative vehicles on the highway mainline seek for optimal strategies (i.e., whether and when to perform...

Traffic Flow Theory: An introduction with exercises

Traffic processes cause several problems in the world. Traffic delay, pollution are some of it. They can be solved with the right road design or traffic management (control) measure. Before implementing these designs of measures, though, their effect could be tested. To this end, knowledge of traffic flow theory is needed.

Cooperative distributed predictive control for collision-free vehicle platoons

The rapidly developing computing and communication technologies improve the autonomy of individual vehicles on the one hand and facilitate the coordination among vehicles on the other. In the context of dynamic speed management, this study considers a platoon of intelligent vehicles that are required to maintain desired inter-vehicle spaces and...

A new method to assess the climate effect of mitigation strategies for road traffic: The fast chemistry-climate response model TransClim

Emissions of road traffic crucially influence Earth’s climate. The vehicle fleet emits not only carbon dioxide (CO2), but also nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and carbon monoxide (CO) which produce ozone (O3) and destroy methane (CH4) in the troposphere. As the demand of mobility is expected to further increase in future,...

Fast Model Predictive Control Approaches for Road Traffic Control

Traffic congestion has become a global issue that has a significant impact on our societys productivity. Its negative effects not only lie in the travel delays and unsafe conditions that it brings to road users, but also many aspects of our lives such as the air we all breathe. Construction and traffic management are typical alternatives for...

Efficient Algorithms for Network-Wide Road Traffic Control

Controlling road traffic networks is a complex problem. One of the difficulties is the coordination of actuators, such as traffic lights, variables speed limits, ramp metering and route guidance, with the aim to improve the network performance over a near-future time horizon. This dissertation develops algorithms that specifically balance fast...

Calibrating Car Following Parameters for Snowy Road Conditions in the Microscopic Traffic Simulator VISSIM

Calibrated simulation models taking into account adverse weather conditions can be used to optimise traffic management strategies, such as speed adaptation and signal timing optimisation. On snowy road conditions, car following behaviour changes because drivers tend to accelerate more slowly, increase their following distance and drive with...

Architecture-Driven Integration of Modeling Languages for the Design of Software-Intensive Systems

In the research that led to this thesis a multi-disciplinary approach, combining Traffic Engineering and Software Engineering, was used. Traffic engineers come up with new control strategies and algorithms for improving traffic. Once new solutions are defined from a Traffic Engineering point of view, there is the problem of obtaining operational...

The influence of sensitivity for road traffic noise on residential location: Does it trigger a process of spatial selection?

People move to another house for different reasons. It is sometimes presumed that a process of self-selection might take place on the basis of noise sensitivity, i.e., sensitive people would either leave high noise areas or not move into these areas in the first place. Thus, a “survivor population” would remain in the high noise areas. This...