Implementing scenarios coordination for road network traffic control

In the Netherlands, the common approach for road network traffic control is top-down control by applying so-called scenarios. However, when the number of scenarios are getting larger, operators are not able to handle. In this paper, we will present an approach to improve the scenario-based control from a bottom-up approach by using so-called scenario coordination module. The bottom-up approach introduces a set of agents called buildingblocks. A road network can be divided into several subnetworks and each subnetwork can be divided into several buildingblocks. The combination of buildingblocks can represent a scenario. Moreover, they can communicate with each other and try to resolve the conflicts by themselves. By using this approach, the scenario-based top-down control becomes more dynamic, flexible and more adaptive to the current traffic pattern. It improves the performance of the top-down control. This approach has been applied in the operational traffic control system for the Dutch city of Amsterdam. It was developed at the Dutch traffic management company Trinité Automation B.V.