Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction Method Based on Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Complex Road Network

Abstract

With the development of urbanization, the number of residents’ motor vehicles has increased sharply, and traffic congestion problem has become increasingly serious. The construction of Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) has become the main means to alleviate traffic congestion. Short-term traffic flow prediction has guiding significance for residents’ travel planning and intelligent management of transportation, and has become one of the research hotspots in intelligent transportation field.Therefore, A short-term traffic flow prediction method based on the spatio-temporal characteristics of complex road networks is proposed to further improve the prediction accuracy and reduce the prediction cost. Firstly, a graph convolutional network (GCN) capable of processing non-Euclidean data structures is used to extract the spatial characteristics of traffic flow data. Then, the long and short-term memory (LSTM) neural network is used to process the time characteristics. Finally, the two are combined to realize the effective processing of the spatio-temporal characteristics of traffic flow data. Experimental results on the real traffic flow dataset prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, and can provide a basis for intelligent traffic control and smart city construction.