A Medium-Scale Network Model for Short-Term Traffic Prediction at Neighbourhood Level

A macroscopic model for predicting the evolution of traffic on medium-scale networks is proposed in this paper. The model takes into consideration the flows of vehicles which move from some origins to some destinations, and it is based on the LWR discrete-time/discrete-space vehicle conservation equation, which leads to quite simple models that can be employed within optimization and control schemes, aimed at regulating traffic and mitigating congestions at neighbourhood level. In the proposed model, vehicles are not constrained to stay in a link for at least one time interval, as they are allowed to enter a link and exit from it within the same interval. This feature requires a particular property (upstream dependence) of the digraph which represents the traffic network, in any case, a modified version of the dynamic model is also proposed in the paper, in order to deal with complex networks which do not have such a property.