Traffic Incident Analysis on Urban Arterials Using Extended Spectral Envelope Method

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extended spectral envelope method for detecting key traffic incident times on urban arterials, with sensitivity analysis on parameters to optimize detection accuracy.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel extended spectral envelope method and analyzes parameter effects for accurate traffic incident detection in urban settings.

Findings

Moderate time window length yields best detection accuracy.

Shorter sliding windows improve incident time detection.

Too short study periods hinder end time detection.

Abstract

A traffic incident analysis method based on extended spectral envelope (ESE) method is presented to detect the key incident time. Sensitivity analysis of parameters (the length of time window, the length of sliding window and the study period) are discussed on four real traffic incidents in Beijing. The results show that: (1) Moderate length of time window got the best accurate in detection. (2) The shorter the sliding window is, the more accurate the key incident time are detected. (3) If the study period is too short, the end time of an incident cannot be detected. Empirical studies show that the proposed method can effectively discover the key incident time, which can provide a theoretic basis for traffic incident management.