Generating urban road intersection models from low-frequency GPS trajectory data

Abstract

ABSTRACTDetailed real-time road data are an important prerequisite for navigation and intelligent transportation systems. As accident-prone areas, road intersections play a critical role in route guidance and traffic management. Ubiquitous trajectory data have led to a recent surge in road map reconstruction. However, it is still challenging to automatically generate detailed structural models for road intersections, especially from low-frequency trajectory data. We propose a novel three-step approach to extract the structural and semantic information of road intersections from low-frequency trajectories. The spatial coverage of road intersections is first detected based on hotspot analysis and triangulation-based point clustering. Next, an improved hierarchical trajectory clustering algorithm is designed to adaptively extract the turning modes and traffic rules of road intersections. Finally, structural models are generated via K-segment fitting and common subsequence merging. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently handle low-frequency, unstable trajectory data and accurately extract the structural and semantic features of road intersections. Therefore, the proposed method provides a promising solution for enriching and updating routable road data.