Large-Scale Realistic Macro-Simulation of Vehicle Movement on Road Networks
Nuosuola Li · KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) · 2013
Moving object generators have developed rapidly in recent years, contributing to the development and benchmark of data intensive applications. The generated outputs are important for the acquisition of realistic, real-time positions of moving objects (vehicles) on road networks to design and evaluate systems and services that monitor traffic, discover and predict regularities in movement and traffic and provide realistic test scenarios for future Location-Based Services (LBS) and Intelligent Transport Systems and Services (ITS/S). In many applications that deal with traffic data, the road network of the target simulation area is needed, and for the results to be useful the simulated input data should mimic real data as much as possible. Therefore, in this thesis, the popular Brinkhoff generator which simulates moving objects based on road network is extended in four major ways. First, the generator is initialized by an OD file. Such files can be generated from OD matrices that are common in transportation research. These OD matrices are either obtained based on surveys or geostatistical datasets and a model. Second, the generator is extended to implement three movement observation models: Time-Based Observation (TBO), Change-Based Observation (CBO), Location-Based Observation (LBO) and three trajectory referencing models: Linear Referencing (LR), Euclidean Referencing (ER) and Network Segment Based Referencing (NSBR). Third, based on the Greenshield flow model, a theoretical and reasonably realistic macro model for the interaction of objects at intersections is proposed and integrated into the extended generator. Finally, an interface with user-defined parameters is integrated into the Brinkhoff generator to manage the input file selection, extension models selection and the output datasets files generation. On a standard computer, the generator can simulate 8.5% of the realistic trips generated in one day in less than 29 hours, 4% of the motorized trips (5057 trips from total 126446 trips) during a typical peak hour, 100% of the motorized trips (9751 trips) during a typical off peak hour of a city like Copenhagen with 590 thousand inhabitants.