Short-term Traffic Flow Prediction Research Articles

An Artificial Neural Network Model for Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction in Two Lane Highway in Khulna Metropolitan City, Bangladesh

Short-term traffic flow prediction is one of the most significant research topics in traffic engineering. It is instrumental in designing a more modern transport network to manage traffic signals and reduce congestion. Short-term traffic flow is a challenge that a third-world country like Bangladesh is all too familiar with. Like the other cities of Bangladesh, Khulna Metropolitan City is gradually becoming more aware of this situation. The Khulna-Jashore National Highway (N-7), which runs through the city and provides a linear shape, serves as the backbone of the Khulna Metropolitan City traffic flow. This study developed an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model for the short-term Traffic Flow Prediction on Two-Lane Highway in Khulna Metropolitan City, Bangladesh. Data was collected from March 1, 2021, through June 30, 2021, during 600–900 hours and 1200–1500 hours. Good-quality electronic cameras recorded the vehicles at the full designated length. The regression graphs displayed the network outputs with targets for the training, validation, and test sets. The various speed level parameters for which the fit is reasonable for all data sets, with R values of 0.98426 in each case. The various traffic volume parameters for which the fit is reasonable for all data sets, with R values of 0.96758 in each case. The model's superiority is indicated by its low mean squared error values. This study demonstrated that the neural network has a good prediction effect on specific road traffic flow, which can achieve the goal of short-term prediction and has improved practicability through testing on real traffic data. This study provides an opportunity to provide a suitable alternative for short-term traffic flow forecasting in Khulna Metropolitan City with traffic flow conditions for two-lane undivided highways.

Short-term Traffic Flow Prediction Based on KELM Optimized By Improved Slime Mould Algorithm

Traffic flow prediction plays a crucial role in improving transportation efficiency and enhancing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). However, the temporal, spatial, and nonlinear nature of traffic flow data presents challenges for accurate short-term prediction. We propose a short-term traffic flow prediction model based on Kernel Extreme Learning Machine (KELM) optimized by the improved Slime Mould Algorithm (SMA). KELM is an improved version of Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) that incorporates kernel functions for improved generalization and stability. SMA is a meta-heuristic algorithm inspired by the behavior of slime mould in foraging, known for its strong global searching ability. For better performance, three strategies are introduced: the Good Point Set method for optimizing the initial population, the combination of Opposition Based Learning (OBL) and Differential Evolution (DE) to improve the slime mould generation mechanism, and the use of adaptive t distribution mutation to enhance convergence speed. After comparing the performance of these improved SMAs on twelve test functions, the ISMA improved by integrating three strategies as mentioned above is best. Then the ISMA is applied to search for the optimal parameters of KELM model. Finally, the optimized KELM with optimal parameters is applied to predict the short-term traffic flow on given traffic data set. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model, KELM optimized by ISMA namely ISMA-KELM, outperforms existing models such as Random Forest (RF), Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LSSVM), KELM optimized by Tuna Swarm Optimization Algorithm (TSO-KELM), and KELM optimized by SMA (SMA-KELM) in terms of traffic flow prediction accuracy. The proposed model ISMA-KELM provides a promising approach for addressing the challenges of traffic flow prediction, offering improved accuracy and efficiency in real-time traffic management systems.

Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction Based on Wavelet Analysis and XGBoost

Traffic flow prediction is of great significance for urban planning and alleviating traffic congestion. Due to the randomness and high volatility of urban road network short-term traffic flow, it is difficult for a single model to accurately estimate traffic flow and travel time. In order to obtain more ideal prediction accuracy, a combined prediction model based on wavelet decomposition and reconstruction (WDR) and the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) model is developed in this paper. Firstly, the Mallat algorithm is applied to perform multi-scale wavelet decomposition on the average travel time series of the original traffic data, and single branch reconstruction is performed on the components at each scale. Secondly, XGBoost is used to predict each reconstructed single-branch sequence, so as to obtain multiple sub-models, and the Bayesian algorithm is used to optimize the hyperparameters of the sub-models. Finally, the algebraic sum of the predicted values of all sub-models is used to obtain the overall traffic prediction result. To test the performance of the proposed model, actual traffic flow data has been collected from a certain link of the Brooklyn area in New York, USA. The performance of proposed WDR-XGBoost model has been compared with other existing machine learning models, e.g., support vector regression model (SVR) and single XGBoost model. Experimental findings demonstrated that the proposed WDR-XGBoost model performs better on multiple evaluation indicators and has significantly outperformed the other models in terms of accuracy and stability.

Spatiotemporal information enhanced multi-feature short-term traffic flow prediction.

Accurately predicting traffic flow is crucial for optimizing traffic conditions, reducing congestion, and improving travel efficiency. To explore spatiotemporal characteristics of traffic flow in depth, this study proposes the MFSTBiSGAT model. The MFSTBiSGAT model leverages graph attention networks to extract dynamic spatial features from complex road networks, and utilizes bidirectional long short-term memory networks to capture temporal correlations from both past and future time perspectives. Additionally, spatial and temporal information enhancement layers are employed to comprehensively capture traffic flow patterns. The model aims to directly extract original temporal features from traffic flow data, and utilizes the Spearman function to extract hidden spatial matrices of road networks for deeper insights into spatiotemporal characteristics. Historical traffic speed and lane occupancy data are integrated into the prediction model to reduce forecasting errors and enhance robustness. Experimental results on two real-world traffic datasets demonstrate that MFSTBiSGAT successfully extracts and captures spatiotemporal correlations in traffic networks, significantly improving prediction accuracy.

Survey of short-term traffic flow prediction based on LSTM

Short-time traffic flow prediction can not only help urban traffic management to complete the control and induce but also reduce the degree of urban congestion and improve the efficiency of urban operation. At the same time, improving the effect of short-time traffic flow prediction is one of the key points of traffic control and guidance development. Currently, there are many different models for short-term traffic flow prediction, and different prediction models have their different advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we review the current status of research on short-time traffic flow prediction based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network: first, we analyze the research method in this paper; second, we briefly review the research and application effects of common prediction methods in traffic flow prediction; finally, the optimization method based on LSTM and its application effect are summarized and analyzed from the aspect of LSTM network and its combination model. In addition, short-time traffic flow prediction still faces challenges due to the problems of the data itself and the complexity of real-world traffic flow impact factors.

Short-term traffic flow prediction based on hybrid decomposition optimization and deep extreme learning machine

Precise and robust short-term traffic flow forecasting is vital to reduce carbon emissions and alleviate traffic congestion. However, developing a traffic flow prediction model that is both precise and robust is exceedingly difficult, owing to the nonlinear and non-stationary characteristics of traffic flow. This study proposes a novel hybrid model (CPQDELM) in pursuit of this objective. This model attains satisfactory prediction performance by integrating the complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN), permutation entropy (PE), dung beetle optimization algorithm based on quantum inspiration and multistrategy improvement(QMDBO), and deep extreme learning machine (DELM). The proposed model employs CEEMDAN and PE for data decomposition and reorganization and then uses the QMDBO algorithm to optimize the DELM parameters. Experiments are conducted in this study to validate the efficacy of the QMDBO algorithm and the CPQDELM hybrid model, respectively. First, the effectiveness of the improvement strategy proposed in this study is verified by comparing the proposed QMDBO algorithm with six other algorithms through experiments on the CEC2021 test function. Secondly, using two real-world datasets, comparing the CPQDELM hybrid model and twelve baseline models. The results indicate that the model proposed in this study performs better than the current methodologies. The RMSE, MAE, and MAPE of the model proposed in this study are all decreased by 27.24 %, 25.97 %, and 33.56 %, respectively, when compared to the conventional DELM, using the S321k51 dataset of mountain scenic highway as an example.

Short-term traffic flow prediction via weight optimization of composite models

ABSTRACT Accurate prediction of peak-hour traffic flow is crucial for congestion management. Neural network models have varying performance in different domains, limiting their effectiveness in traffic data. To address this, we propose the SSA-BiLSTM-BP-Elman ensemble model. It integrates bi-directional long short-term memory (BiLSTM), back propagation (BP) neural network, and Elman network. The model uses the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) to optimize the weight distribution to improve the prediction accuracy. Initially, the BiLSTM, BP, and Elman models are parameter-optimized by the Bayesian approach. SSA then assigns unique weights to each model based on the characteristics of the extracted data features. Results from an application to UK high-speed traffic flow data show that SSA significantly improves the accuracy of model predictions. This integrated model effectively utilizes the strengths of each model by assigning appropriate weighting coefficients by SSA, thus improving the overall prediction performance.

Short-term traffic flow prediction in heterogeneous traffic conditions using Gaussian process regression

Short-term traffic flow prediction in heterogeneous traffic conditions using Gaussian process regression

Short-term traffic flow prediction based on vehicle trip chain features

ABSTRACT Short-term traffic flow prediction can improve the efficiency of transportation operations. Historical data-driven prediction methods have been proved to perform well. However, saturated or oversaturated traffic operations cannot be accurately predicted based only on detector data from a single intersection. This study proposes a short-term traffic prediction method based on vehicle trip chain features. First, the video data is pre-processed and quality assessed. Then, vehicle trip chain features are mined to correlate upstream and downstream intersections.Convolutional neural networks and long-short-term-memory model are built next. The model is launched to train the predictor and output the traffic flow for all turns at each approach to the intersection. After cases we demonstrate that the prediction accuracy of CNNs-LSTM is usually better than other methods, especially during oversaturation. In addition, we demonstrate that vehicle trip chain features can improve prediction accuracy and shorten the time consumed by the model.

A Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction Method for Airport Group Route Waypoints Based on the Spatiotemporal Features of Traffic Flow

To fully leverage the spatiotemporal dynamic correlations in air traffic flow and enhance the accuracy of traffic flow prediction models, thereby providing a more precise basis for perceiving congestion situations in the air route network, a study was conducted on a traffic flow prediction method based on deep learning considering spatiotemporal factors. A waypoint network topology graph was constructed, and a neural network model called graph convolution and self-attention-based long short-term memory neural network (GC-SALSTM) was proposed. This model utilized waypoint flow and network efficiency loss rate as input features, with graph convolution extracting spatial features from the waypoint network. Additionally, a long short-term memory network based on a self-attention mechanism was used to extract temporal features, achieving accurate prediction of waypoint traffic. An example analysis was performed on a typical busy sector of airports in the Central and Southern China region. The effectiveness of adding the network efficiency loss rate as an input feature to improve the accuracy of critical waypoint traffic prediction was validated. The performance of the proposed model was compared with various typical prediction models. The results indicated that, with the addition of the network efficiency loss rate, the root mean square error (RMSE) for eight waypoints decreased by more than 10%. Compared to the historical average (HA), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), support vector regression (SVR), long short-term memory (LSTM), and graph convolution network and long short-term memory network (GCN-LSTM) models, the RMSE of the proposed model decreased by 11.78%, 5.55%, 0.29%, 2.53%, and 1.09%, respectively. This suggests that the adopted network efficiency loss rate indicator effectively enhances prediction accuracy, and the constructed model exhibits superior predictive performance in short-term waypoint traffic forecasting compared to other prediction models. It contributes to optimizing flight paths and high-altitude air routes, minimizing flight delays and airborne congestion to the greatest extent, thus enhancing the overall efficiency of the entire aviation system.

FedAGAT: Real-time traffic flow prediction based on federated community and adaptive graph attention network

Predicting traffic flow is vital for optimizing intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and reducing congestion by forecasting traffic patterns accurately. However, current centralized TFP systems have limitations, e.g., slow training, high communication costs, and privacy concerns. To address these challenges, this study proposes FedAGAT, a system for short-term traffic flow prediction (TFP) based on federated community and adaptive spatial-temporal graph attention networks (AGAT). The FedAGAT system allows for local data processing and sharing only model updates with the server. This enables real-time, scalable, and secure TFP - essential capabilities for efficient ITS. AGAT is employed to capture intricate spatial-temporal dependencies in traffic flow, while federated learning facilitates decentralized learning, enhancing privacy. The FedAGAT prediction process involves four steps: dividing the local subnetwork using spectral community detection, locally training based on global parameters, uploading updated parameters, and creating a global model prediction based on the aggregated parameters. To evaluate the performance of FedAGAT, two real-world traffic datasets were utilized for benchmarking against seven statistical and deep learning models. Results demonstrate that FedAGAT provides relatively higher accuracy for short- and mid-term forecasting horizons. Moreover, FedAGAT predictions closely match real traffic flow values, and the overall performance is comparable to a global model, while requiring less time.

Convolutional Neural Network-Based Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit–Additive Attention Mechanism Hybrid Deep Neural Networks for Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction

To more accurately predict short-term traffic flow, this study posits a sophisticated integrated prediction model, CNN-BiGRU-AAM, based on the additive attention mechanism of a convolutional bidirectional gated recurrent unit neural network. This model seeks to enhance the precision of traffic flow prediction by integrating both historical and prospective data. Specifically, the model achieves prediction through two steps: encoding and decoding. In the encoding phase, convolutional neural networks are used to extract spatial correlations between weather and traffic flow in the input sequence, while the BiGRU model captures temporal correlations in the time series. In the decoding phase, an additive attention mechanism is introduced to weigh and fuse the encoded features. The experimental results demonstrate that the CNN-BiGRU model, coupled with the additive attention mechanism, is capable of dynamically capturing the temporal patterns of traffic flow, and the introduction of isolation forests can effectively handle data anomalies and missing values, improving prediction accuracy. Compared to benchmark models such as GRU, the CNN-BiGRU-AAM model shows significant improvement on the test set, with a 47.49 reduction in the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), a 30.72 decrease in the Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and a 5.27% reduction in the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The coefficient of determination (R2) reaches 0.97, indicating the high accuracy of the CNN-BiGRU-AAM model in traffic flow prediction. It provides a good solution for short-term traffic flow with spatio-temporal features, thereby enhancing the efficiency of traffic management and planning and promoting the sustainable development of transportation.

Short-term traffic flow prediction at isolated intersections based on parallel multi-task learning

This paper proposes a novel phase-based short-term traffic flow prediction method based on parallel multi-task learning for isolated intersections. Different from traditional short-term traffic flow prediction methods, we take the traffic flow of each phase as the minimum prediction unit, instead of directly utilising the traffic flow of a single lane with large random fluctuations. Meanwhile, we design a novel encoding and decoding structure whereby external influencing factors have been incorporated both into encoding and decoding operations. Furthermore, a fusion strategy is proposed to predict the traffic flow of each phase by integrating the traffic flows of lanes whose right of way are provided by the phase. In the fusion strategy, we develop a parallel multi-task prediction framework whereby a new loss function is defined to improve the prediction accuracy. Finally, the proposed method is tested with the traffic flow data collected from an intersection of South Changsheng Road located in the city of Jiaxing. The findings illustrate that the proposed method can achieve better prediction results at different sampling time scales, compared to the existing short-term traffic flow prediction methods.

Efficient implementation of a wavelet neural network model for short-term traffic flow prediction: Sensitivity analysis

The concept of a smart city is emerging to address significant challenges arising from rapid urbanization, economic growth, and climate change. Innovative technologies can be used as a means to promote sustainable and inclusive urban development. These technolgies include the deployment of the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), energy management, and smart transportation. In a smart city, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) play a vital role in efficient traffic management. This paper explores the use of hybrid artificial intelligence techniques for predicting short-term traffic flow data from M25 motorways in the UK. Since volume traffic flow data are non-stationary, wavelet transform (WT) as a powerful signal analyzer is applied for signal decomposition for the elimination of redundant data from input matrices. The feature selection method based on Gram-Schmidt (GS) is used for the selection of more valuable features. The elimination of redundant data can speed up the learning process and improve the generalisation capability of the prediction models. After a pre-processing stage, a wavelet neural network (WNN) with a simple structure is applied as a powerful prediction tool. Two separate structures are considered for the prediction of weekday and weekend traffic volume data. The experiments explore that the debauchies-4 (db4) wavelet function with 7 decomposition levels leads to the best detection accuracy. Moreover, the range of forecasting, the type of the day, the level of decomposition, and other factors all have an impact on prediction stability. Compared with existing prediction methods, the proposed approach produces lower values of root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) for all step-horizons analyzed. These findings provide valuable implications and insights into the development of an efficient and reliable road condition monitoring system for delivering secure and sustainable transportation services.

Short-term traffic flow prediction based on SAE and its parallel training

Short-term traffic flow prediction based on SAE and its parallel training

A Deep Ensemble Approach for Long-Term Traffic Flow Prediction

In the last 50 years, with the growth of cities and increase in the number of vehicles and mobility, traffic has become troublesome. As a result, traffic flow prediction started to attract attention as an important research area. However, despite the extensive literature, traffic flow prediction still remains as an open research problem, specifically for long-term traffic flow prediction. Compared to the models developed for short-term traffic flow prediction, the number of models developed for long-term traffic flow prediction is very few. Based on this shortcoming, in this study, we focus on long-term traffic flow prediction and propose a novel deep ensemble model (DEM). In order to build this ensemble model, first, we developed a convolutional neural network (CNN), a long short-term memory (LSTM) network and a gated recurrent unit (GRU) network as deep learning models, which formed the base learners. In the next step, we combine the output of these models according to their individual forecasting success. We use another deep learning model to determine the success of the individual models. Our proposed model is a flexible ensemble prediction model that can be updated based on traffic data. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model, we use a publicly available dataset. Experimental results show that the developed DEM model has a mean square error of 0.06 and a mean absolute error of 0.15 for single-step prediction; it shows that achieves a mean square error of 0.25 and a mean absolute error of 0.32 for multi-step prediction. We compared our proposed model with many models in different categories; individual deep learning models (i.e., LSTM, CNN, GRU), selected traditional machine learning models (i.e., linear regression, decision tree regression, k-nearest-neighbors regression) and other ensemble models such as random-forest regression. These results also support the claim that ensemble learning models perform better than individual models.

Improving Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction using Grey Relational Analysis for Data Filtering and Stacked LSTM Modeling

Traffic flow prediction is one of the critical measures to alleviate traffic congestion. Currently, traffic flow prediction research has made some achievements, but there are still some deficiencies. In order to solve the problems of low prediction accuracy, poor real-time performance, and high data dimensions. This paper proposes a new traffic flow prediction method that employs Grey Relation Analysis (GRA) to detect the correlation between detection points, remove insignificant or uncorrelated traffic flow data points, and hence reduce the data dimensionality of the prediction model. Multiple Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models are then stacked to establish the traffic flow prediction model, considering that traffic flow is affected by multi-dimensional spatiotemporal factors, incorporating vehicle speed, occupancy, and traffic volume as inputs. We conducted experiments on real datasets, and the results showed that our GRA-SLSTM model improved prediction accuracy by 3.6% compared to other models, while reducing model prediction time by 27.33%. The proposed model’s generalization ability is validated by predicting other detection points, which provides significant references for traffic flow prediction research and practical applications.

Hybrid short-term traffic flow prediction based on the effect of non-linear sequence noise

<abstract> <p>Short-term traffic flow prediction is crucial for intelligent transport systems and mitigating traffic congestion. Therefore, precise prediction of real-time traffic conditions is becoming more important. Currently, the existing prediction models lack the ability to effectively extract spatio-temporal characteristics and fail to adequately account for the impact of non-linear noise. To address these issues, the study proposes a hybrid short-term traffic flow prediction model based on spatio-temporal characteristics. First, the method decomposes the initial spatio-temporal traffic sequence data into multiple modal components using the complementary ensemble empirical modal decomposition method. Then, spatio-temporal characteristics are extracted from the decomposed spatio-temporal components using a deep residual network. The predicted values of each factor are combined to obtain the final predicted values. To validate the model, traffic flow data that is collected at point 4909A on the M25 motorway in London is used. The results indicate that the proposed model outperforms other models in terms of accuracy metrics such as root mean square error, mean absolute percentage error, mean absolute error, mean squared error, and coefficient of determination. Therefore, the model has high accuracy and practicality and exhibits great potential for short-term traffic flow prediction.</p> </abstract>

Application of Autoformer to Short-Term Traffic Flow Prediction

This paper investigates the application of Autoformer model in the field of short-term traffic flow prediction. Traffic flow prediction is crucial for urban planning and traffic management, and is important for relieving traffic congestion and improving traffic efficiency. Autoformer, as a Transformer model based on the self-attention mechanism, provides a powerful modeling capability for the task of traffic flow prediction through its ability to automatically learn feature relationships. The paper first introduces the background and importance of traffic flow prediction and outlines current prediction methods and their limitations. Subsequently, the structure and working principle of Autoformer are described in detail, elucidating the advantages over traditional models. Autoformer’s self-attention mechanism can effectively capture the long-range dependencies in the input sequences and better adapt to the dynamic changes of traffic flow. To verify the performance of Autoformer in short-time traffic flow prediction, experiments are conducted using real traffic flow datasets. The results show that Autoformer significantly improves the prediction accuracy and generalization ability compared to traditional time series models. In addition, model interpretive analysis was conducted, revealing the advantages of Autoformer for automatic extraction of traffic flow features and correlation modeling.

RESEARCH ON CHAOTIC CHARACTERISTICS AND SHORT-TERM PREDICTION OF EN-ROUTE TRAFFIC FLOW USING ADS-B DATA

The short-term traffic flow prediction can help to reduce flight delays and optimize resource allocation. Using chaos dynamics theory to analyze the chaotic characteristics of en-route traffic flow is the basis of short-term en-route traffic flow prediction and ensuring the orderly and smooth state of the en-route. This paper takes the time series of en-route traffic flow extracted from Automatic-Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) measured data as the research object, uses the improved C–C method to reconstruct the phase space, and uses the improved small data volume method to calculate the Lyapunov index to identify the chaos phenomenon of en-route traffic flow. In order to avoid the interference of chaos phenomenon on traffic prediction, the Wavelet Neural Network (WNN) model is established to predict the traffic flow at en-route points. The experimental shows that when the number of iterations is 10,000, the average accuracy of WNN prediction is 0.87173, and the average running time is 6.9335334[Formula: see text]s. According to the experimental results, it can be seen that the smaller number of iterations has more advantages in running time, which greatly reduces the overall running time. At the same time, it indicates that appropriately increasing or reducing the number of iterations in this experiment has little effect on the results.