Framework for developing proactive traffic control systems

Proactive traffic control systems based on short term traffic condition forecasting hold great promise in combating degenerating network congestion in urban areas. However, a gap persists between the theory and practice of traffic condition forecasting hindering the development of such systems and delaying the benefits they will provide. Therefore, a framework is proposed in this paper, for facilitating the integration of recently developed forecasting algorithms into deployed traffic control systems. This framework is based on two premises, namely that 1) the recognition of time interval as the key determining factor for system integration and 2) robust forecasting integration is aided by fundamental understanding of the structural similarity between the reactive and proactive traffic control systems. This framework serves as a step further towards a unified proactive system-wide Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) traffic condition and state estimation framework.