Decision support system for urban transportation networks

Abstract

This paper deals with the real-time regulation of traffic within a disrupted transportation system. We outline the necessity of a decision support system that detects, analyzes, and resolves the unpredicted disturbances. Due to the distributed aspects of transportation systems, we present a multi-agent approach for the regulation process. Moreover, this approach also includes an evolutionary algorithm that is based on an original genetic coding representing the decisions on a set of vehicles and stops affected by the disturbance. This set constitutes, in fact, the space-time horizon of the regulation process. The evolutionary algorithm then treats the regulation problem as an optimization and provides the regulator with relevant decisions that can result in a partial reconfiguration of the network.