Analysis and visualization of historical traffic data collected on the Stockholm highway system

Abstract: The congestion due to traffic is a worldwide occurrence in major cities, where also the biggest part of the human population lives. To be able to control and oversee the ongoing traffic development in cities, traffic operators use different methods to observe the current trend. This is done by collecting data from stationary sensors to mobile sensors like floating car data. The data collected from stationary sensors is stored in a central database. This historical traffic data is used for analysis of traffic behavior along the main roadway network in Stockholm. Areas which are highly congested can be located as well as areas where traffic flows without problems. This thesis deals with methods to analyze and visualize the traffic behavior based on historical traffic data, measured in the city of Stockholm. Therefore a toolbox is implemented which is used to figure out bottlenecks and typical speed and flow patterns along the Stockholm highway system. Based on the typical speed and flow patterns, it is possible to calculate areas that are affected of congestion and also to determine whether congestion appears due to an incident or a bottleneck.