The physics of traffic and regional development

Abstract

This contribution summarizes and explains various principles from physics which are used for the simulation of traffic flows in large street networks, the modeling of destination, transport mode, and route choice, or the simulation of urban growth and regional development. The methods stem from many-particle physics, from kinetic gas theory, or fluiddynamics. They involve energy and entropy considerations, transfer the law of gravity, apply cellular automata and require methods from evolutionary game theory. In this way, one can determine interaction forces among driver-vehicle units, reproduce breakdowns of traffic including features of synchronized congested flow, or understand changing usage patterns of alternative roads. One can also describe daily activity patterns based on decision models, simulate migration streams, and model urban growth as a particular kind of aggregation process.

Complex Systems in Education: Scientific and Educational Importance and Implications for the Learning Sciences

“…These computational modeling approaches include cellular automata, network and agent-based modeling, neural networks, genetic algorithms, Monte Carlo simulations, and so on that are generally used in conjunction with scientific visualization techniques. Examples of complex systems that have been investigated with advanced computational modeling techniques include climate change (West & Dowlatabadi, 1999), urban transportation models (Balmer, Nagel, & Raney, 2004;Helbing & Nagel, 2004;Noth, Borning, & Waddell, 2000), and economics (Anderson et al, 1988;Arthur, Durlauf, & Lane, 1997;Axelrod, 1997;Epstein & Axtell, 1996). New communities of scientific practice have also emerged in which computational modeling techniques, in particular agent-based models and genetic algorithms, are being used to create synthetic worlds such as artificial life (Langton, 1989(Langton, , 1995 and artificial societies (Epstein & Axtell, 1996) that allow tremendous flexibility to explore theoretical and research questions in the physical, biological, and social sciences that would be difficult or impossible in "real" or nonsynthetic settings.…”

Complexity aided design

“…A broad range of theoretical developments to better understand traffic and transportation network performance, from the development of new theories to explain traffic breakdown, car following, and traffic kinetics, to the development of new route choice mechanisms, cooperative game behavior under network uncertainty, and dynamic models for travel activity generation [50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]. The key issues are:…”

A Survey of Models and Design Methods for Self-organizing Networked Systems

“…An interesting application of cellular automata, studied extensively in both the physics and the engineering communities, is the modeling and analysis of urban vehicular traffic [37,38,39,40]. Gershenson and Rosenblueth [41] apply a twodimensional model based on simple interaction roles.…”