CS382:Unit-traffic

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.

• http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/janfeb99/traffic.htm
• http://www.saturnsoftware.co.uk/
• http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=963600.963674&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=20327714&CFTOKEN=91787820
• http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18774/?a=f

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?