Award Date

May 2017

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction

First Committee Member

Alexander Paz

Second Committee Member

Pramen Shrestha

Third Committee Member

Mohamed Kaseko

Fourth Committee Member

Brendan Morris

Number of Pages

74

Abstract

This study proposes a methodology for the calibration of microscopic traffic flow simulation models by enabling simultaneous selection of traffic links and associated parameters. That is, any number and combination of links and model parameters can be selected for calibration. Most calibration approaches consider the entire network without enabling a specific selection of location and associated parameters. In practice, only a subset of links and parameters are used for calibration based on a number of factors such as expert local knowledge of the system. In this study, the calibration problem for the simultaneous selection of links and parameters was formulated using a mathematical programming approach. The proposed methodology is capable of calibrating model parameters model parameters, taking into consideration multiple performance measures and time periods simultaneously. The performance measures used in this study were volume and speed. The development of the methodology is independent of the characteristics of a specific traffic flow model. A genetic algorithm was implemented to determine the solution to the proposed mathematical program for the calibration of microscopic traffic flow models. In the experiments, two traffic models were calibrated. The first set of experiments included selection of links only, while all associated parameters were considered for calibration. The second set of experiments considered simultaneous selection of links and parameters. Results showed that the models were calibrated successfully subject to selection of a minimum number of links. All parameter values were reasonable and within constraints after successful calibration.

Keywords

Calibration; CORSIM; Genetic Algorithm; Mathematical programming; Microscopic traffic flow; Traffic flow simulation

Disciplines

Civil Engineering

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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