On adopting a Petri net-based switching modelling system to represent and control urban areas

Deterministic timed Petri nets are a suitable modelling formalism to represent signalized urban areas microscopically, when pursuing traffic management and control purposes. In the proposed model, an urban transportation network is considered to be composed of signalized intersections and roads. So as to properly model any traffic condition, including congestion, any intersection equipped with a multi-phase traffic signal is divided into several crossing sections. The modular deterministic timed Petri net representing the overall traffic network allows to implement a switching modelling system. In fact, the representation of some parts of such a Petri net can become more or less detailed, whenever some event modifying the current traffic state occurs.