Urban Traffic State Estimation Problems from Bluetooth Data

Abstract

[evdate 2013-12-17] IAS Workshop on Traffic Measurement for Traffic Management in Urban Networks (TMTM). Title from event program.

Workshop on Traffic Measurement for Traffic Management in Urban Networks (TMTM), held 17 December, 2013, at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Organized by Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, sponsors, HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies (HKSTS).

Abstract: The application of the Bluetooth (BT) technology to transportation has been enabling researchers to make accurate travel time observations, in freeway and arterial roads. The Bluetooth traffic data are generally incomplete, for they only relate to those vehicles that are equipped with Bluetooth devices, and that are detected by the Bluetooth sensors of the road network. The fraction of detected vehicles versus the total number of transiting vehicles is often referred to as Bluetooth Penetration Rate (BTPR). The aim of this study is to precisely define the spatiotemporal relationship between the quantities that become available through the partial, noisy BT observations; and the hidden variables that describe the actual dynamics of vehicular traffic. To do so, we propose to incorporate a mulit-calss traffic model into a Sequential Montecarlo Estimation algorithm. Our framework has been applied for the empirical travel time investigations into the Brisbane Metropolitan region. The results are compared against taxi data and some problems using BT to reconstruct traffic states will be discussed.

Duration: 25 min.