Towards time-parallel road traffic simulation

As an alternative to spatial parallelization of simulation models, time-parallel simulation offers the potential for massive parallelism with a high level of independence between the parallel processes. Unfortunately, due to inherent problems, the applicability of time-parallel simulation is restricted. Therefore, it has been proposed recently, to use approximation with time-parallel simulation in order to facilitate its application and to extend the class of models suitable for time-parallel simulation. As a proof-of-concept, this work shows how approximate temporal parallelization can be applied to the simulation of road traffic. Traffic simulation is used extensively in transportation research for various purposes, e.g. analysis of traffic phenomena, traffic forecast, and optimization of traffic flow. Depending on the level of fidelity, a traffic model exhibits a state space of moderate to high complexity. This paper is intended to discuss the basic properties of time-parallel traffic simulation and to examine its feasibility. Experiments with a sequential microscopic traffic simulator, that emulates important aspects of a corresponding time-parallel simulator, suggest this feasibility.