Calculating the benefit of multiple element traffic management architecture

The benefits of a particular intelligent vehicle highway system (IVHS) traffic management architecture or configuration are composed of (i) benefits from elements that treat recurring congestion due to capacity shortfall and (ii) elements that treat nonrecurring congestion due to incidents. It is often necessary to use single-element effectiveness data to calculate the effectiveness of a multiple element architecture. The way the benefits of the elements combine depends on the interaction of the elements. The interactions may be modeled with mathematical rigor using statistical methods or with heuristic approaches that allow the relative benefits of competing concepts to be assessed. With heuristic models, it is possible to produce estimates of architecture benefits without complete knowledge of how the benefits of all the elements combine. Statistical benefit combination requires that the interactions of the elements be understood and defined.