English

Abstract

Forecasting short-term traffic flow using historical data is a difficult goal to achieve due to the randomness of the event. Due to the lack of a solid approach to short-term traffic prediction, the researchers are still working on novel approaches. This study aims to develop an algorithm that dynamically updates the training set of models in order to make more accurate predictions. For this purpose, an algorithm called Periodic Clustering and Prediction (PCP) has been developed for use in short-term traffic forecasting. In this study, PCP was used to improve Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) predictive performance by improving the training set of ANN to predict short-term traffic flow using selected clusters. A large amount of traffic data collected from the US and UK motorways was used to determine the PCP ability to increase the ANN performance. The robustness of the proposed approach was determined by the performance measures used in the literature and the mean prediction errors of PCP were significantly below other approaches. In addition, the studies showed that the percentage errors of PCP predictions decreased in response to increasing traffic flow values. Considering the obtained positive results, this method can be used in real-time traffic control systems and in different areas needed.