Traffic Theory

Four Eulerian network models are implemented to model high altitude air traffic flow. Three of the models use the framework of discrete time dynamical systems, while the fourth consists of a network of partial differential equations. The construction of these models is done using one year of air traffic data. The four models are applied to high altitude traffic for six Air Route Traffic Control Centers in the National Airspace System and surrounding airspace. Simulations are carried out for a full day of data for each of the models, to assess their predictive capabilities. The models’...

This paper presents a framework and tools developed to study the sensitivity of traffic data quality to detectors location and spacing. Our ultimate objective is to formulate generalized detector deployment guidelines that are based on the functional needs of practitioners, and for which funding can be objectively justified. Our approach consists in using trajectory sets obtained from field experiments and traffic simulation models as ground truth, and to run a traffic detector model from which we extract information that would normally be available to practitioners. Ground truth...

Automotive traffic monitoring using probe vehicles with Global Positioning System receivers promises significant improvements in cost, coverage, and accuracy. Current approaches, however, raise privacy concerns because they require participants to reveal their positions to an external traffic monitoring server. To address this challenge, we propose a system based on virtual trip lines and an associated cloaking technique. Virtual trip lines are geographic markers that indicate where vehicles should provide location updates. These markers can be placed to avoid particularly privacy...

The problem of regulating air traffic in the en route airspace of the national airspace system is studied using an Eulerian network model to describe air traffic flow. The evolution of traffic on each edge of the network is modeled by a modified Lighthill-Whitham-Richards partial differential equation. We pose the problem of optimal traffic flow regulation as a continuous optimization program in which the partial differential equation appears in the constraints. The equation is transformed with a variable change which removes t nonlinearity in the control variables and enables us to use...