A Versatile Description Framework for Modeling Behaviors in Traffic Simulations

Microscopic simulations of road traffic are a typical application domain for Multi-Agent Systems. Indeed, the individual-based approach allows to take into account the diversity of behaviors so as to consider real situations. More recently, geographical databases provide environmental information under open formats, which offers the opportunity to design agent-based traffic simulators which can be continuously informed of changes in traffic conditions. The use of such data, together with the adaptability of MAS, allows the realization of decision support systems that are able to integrate environmental and behavioral modifications in a direct way, and compare various scenarios built from different hypotheses in terms of actors, behaviors, environment and flows. We describe here a modeling approach and a comprehensive process which lead to the development of such a tool.