Towards using microscopic traffic simulations for safety evaluation

Abstract: Microscopic traffic simulation has become an important tool to investigate traffic efficiency and road safety. In order to produce meaningful results, incorporated driver behaviour models need to be carefully calibrated to represent real world conditions. In addition to macroscopic relationships such as the speed-density diagram, they should also adequately represent the average risk of accidents occurring on the road. In this thesis, I present a two stage computationally feasible multi-objective calibration process. The first stage performs a parameter sensitivity analysis to select only parameters with considerable effect on the respective objective functions to keep the computational complexity of the calibration at a manageable level. The second stage employs a multi-objective genetic algorithm that produces a front of Pareto optimal solutions with respect to the objective functions. Compared to traditional methods which focus on only one objective while sacrificing accuracy of the other, my method achieves a high degree of realism for both traffic flow and average risk.