Multi-model based simulation platform for urban traffic simulation

Abstract

Multiagent-based simulations are regarded as a useful technology for analyzing complex social systems; for example, traffic in a city. Traffic in a city has various aspects such as route planning on the road network and driving operations on a certain road. Both types of human behavior are being studied separately by specialists in their respective domains. We believe that traffic simulation platforms should integrate the various paradigms underlying agent decision making and the target environment. We focus on urban traffic as the target problem and attempt to realize a multiagent simulation platform based on the multimodel approach. While traffic flow simulations using simple agents are popular in the traffic domain, it has been recognized that driving behavior simulations with sophisticated agents are also beneficial. However, there is no software platform that can integrate traffic simulators dealing with different aspects of urban traffic. In this paper, we propose a traffic simulation platform that can execute citywide traffic simulations that take account of the aspects of route selection on a road network and driving behavior on individual roads. The proposed simulation platform enables the multiple aspects of city traffic to be reproduced while still retaining scalability. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.