Optimizing Incident Management Strategies Using Simulation

Abstract

Incidents, pre-programmed or random, are major sources of congestion on urban freeways. With many of urban freeways in the US operating close to capacity, the need to reduce the impact of incident-related congestion has become critical. Incident Management Strategies (IMS), when properly developed and deployed, have the potential to reduce such congestion on urban freeways. The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic framework for the calibration and application of a -simulation model for testing the impact of alternate IMS on an urban transportation network. Initially a framework is presented in a conceptual form, and demonstrates the calibration and application of the model on a real life network in the Detroit metropolitan region. While the initial results are positive, full-scale validation and testing with larger networks are recommended to justify the use of -simulation techniques for assessing the impact of different IMS.