A Bayesian method for estimating traffic flows based on plate scanning

Enrique Castillo (), Pilar Jiménez, José Menéndez and María Nogal

Transportation, 2013, vol. 40, issue 1, 173-201

Abstract: In this paper a special conjugate Bayesian method, for reconstructing and estimating traffic flows, based on α-shifted-Gamma $$ \Upgamma (\theta ,\,\lambda ) $$ models $$ H(\alpha ,\,\theta ,\,\lambda ) $$ is given. If the numbers of users traveling through different routes are assumed to be independent $$ H(\alpha ,\,\theta ,\,\lambda) $$ variables with common $$ \lambda,$$ the link, origin–destination (OD) and node flows are also $$ H(\alpha ,\,\theta ,\,\lambda ) $$ random variables. We assume that the main source of information is plate scanning, which permits us to identify, totally or partially, the vehicle route, OD and link flows by scanning their corresponding plate numbers at an adequately selected subset of links. The reconstruction of the sample flows can be done exactly or approximately, depending on the intensity of the plate scanning sampling procedure. To this end a generalized least squares technique is used together with the conservation laws. A Bayesian approach using special conjugate families is proposed that allows us to estimate different traffic flows, such as route, OD-pair, scanned link or counted link flows. A detailed description of how the prior assessment, the sampling, the posterior updating and the obtention of the Bayesian distribution is given. Finally, one example of application is used to illustrate the methods and procedures. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Shifted-Gamma distribution; Conjugate priors; Prior assessment of hyperparameters; Origin–destination and link flow estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11116-012-9443-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:transp:v:40:y:2013:i:1:p:173-201

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11116/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11116-012-9443-4

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation is currently edited by Kay W. Axhausen

More articles in Transportation from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().