Predicting freeway traffic incident duration in an expert system context using fuzzy logic

Incident management is significant for the traffic management systems. The management of incidents determines the smoothness of freeway operations. The dynamic nature of incidents and the uncertainty associated with them require solutions based on the incident operator's judgment. Fuzzy systems attempt to adapt such human expertise and are designed to replicate the decision making capability of an operator. Fuzzy systems process complex traffic information, and transmit it in a simplified, understandable form to human traffic operators.;In this study, fuzzy rules were developed based on data from real incidents on Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. The fuzzy rules are linguistic based, and hence, user-friendly. A comparison of the results from the linguistic model with the real incident durations indicate that the outputs from the model reliably correspond to real incident duration conditions. The model reliably predicts the freeway incident duration. The model can thus be used as an effective management tool for freeway incident response systems. This approach could be applied to other problems regarding dispatch systems in transportation.