CS382:Unit-traffic

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Traffic flow modeling - This could be systems dynamics or agent-based (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_flow) and part of the Measuring the World unit. The simulation would involve modeling a section of traffic to see results of uses of traffic control devices. The validation/verification part of this could be to observe an actual section of traffic here in Richmond.

Comments

Pros

  • A lot of people have already researched this, and it's easy to validate by standing out and watching traffic in an intersection
  • Some statistics and probability

Cons

  • Not much science behind this
  • We can't change the model and see how it affects real life

Comments

  • Could be a good one to teach the verification and validation process
  • Charlie did a class like this years ago where they did stand there and count cars and then wrote a simulation
  • Make people walk through different halls: have one hallway up and one down, versus both both directions
    • Should take less time even if it does walk longer
  • Maybe we don't need to do a lot of physical stuff with this one since people are already familiar with traffic
  • Idea: bunch of cars that have to get somewhere, and you have a limited amount of concrete and traffic control and you have to get cars from point a to point b, and you can control how long and control the lights

To Do

  • Probably going outside is not practical, but we could look at the speed of cars on the webcam, and we know the % of cars that stop at the pedestrian walk, we could play with this
  • See if there's some sort of existing traffic-organizing model
  • Tie in to Monte Carlo simulations?