Framework for Calibration of a Traffic State Space Model

Abstract: To evaluate the traffic state over time and space, several models can be used. A typical model for estimating the state of the traffic for a stretch of road or a road network is the cell transmission model, which is a form of state space model. This kind of model typically needs to be calibrated since the different roads have different properties. This thesis will present a calibration framework for the velocity based cell transmission model, the CTM-v. The cell transmission model for velocity is a discrete time dynamical system that can model the evolution of the velocity field on highways. Such a model can be fused with an ensemble Kalman filter update algorithm for the purpose of velocity data assimilation. Indeed, enabling velocity data assimilation was the purpose for ever developing the model in the first place and it is an essential part of the Mobile Millennium research project. Therefore a systematic methodology for calibrating the cell transmission is needed. This thesis presents a framework for calibration of the velocity based cell transmission model that is combined with the ensemble Kalman filter. The framework consists of two separate methods, one is a statistical approach to calibration of the fundamental diagram. The other is a black box optimization method, a simplification of the complex method that can solve inequality constrained optimization problems with non-differentiable objective functions. Both of these methods are integrated with the existing system, yielding a calibration framework, in particular highways were stationary detectors are part of the infrastructure. The output produced by the above mentioned system is highly dependent on the values of its characterising parameters. Such parameters need to be calibrated so as to make the model a valid representation of reality. Model calibration and validation is a process of its own, most often tailored for the researchers models and purposes. The combination of the two methods are tested in a suit of experiments for two separate highway models of Interstates 880 and 15, CA which are evaluated against travel time and space mean speed estimates given by Bluetooth detectors with an error between 7.4 and 13.4 % for the validation time periods depending on the parameter set and model.