TRAFFIC INCIDENT DETECTION SYSTEM

• US 20090082948A1
• Filed: 07/24/2008
• Published: 03/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Kumagai, Masatoshi, Yokota, Takayoshi, Tanikoshi, Koichiro, HIRUTA, Tomoaki
• Application Number:
  US12/179,246
• Publication Number:
  US 20090082948A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/117
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0104 Measuring and analyzing of parameters relative to traffic conditions

Abstract

An object of the present invention is to provide a traffic information system that detects an unexpected incident such as a traffic accident or construction work from traffic information about surrounding road links. Historical traffic information is used to perform component analysis for a group of links that are targets of unexpected incident detection, and recovered traffic information for the historical traffic information is determined from computed top bases of the traffic information about the group of links. Difference statistical traffic information is generated from the difference between the historical traffic information and its recovered traffic information. For real-time traffic information, recovered traffic information for the real-time traffic information is determined from the top bases. The difference between the real-time traffic information and the recovered traffic information is compared with the difference statistical traffic information, and if the difference of the real-time traffic information is larger, the occurrence of an unexpected incident is determined.

Claims

1. A traffic information system that detects the presence or absence of an unexpected incident on a road link based on externally provided traffic information, comprising:

a traffic information storage unit that accumulates the traffic information;

a statistical computation unit that generates correlation information among road links about traffic information by statistical analysis for historical traffic information stored in the traffic information storage unit;

a traffic information reconstruction unit that determines traffic information reconstructed using the correlation information so that an error relative to input traffic information is minimized;

a difference computation unit that determines a difference between the traffic information input to the traffic information reconstruction unit and the reconstructed traffic information reconstructed for the input traffic information by the traffic information reconstruction unit; and

an unexpected incident determination unit that determines the presence or absence of an unexpected incident, wherein

the traffic information reconstruction unit determines real-time reconstructed traffic information reconstructed for currently provided traffic information, and historical reconstructed traffic information reconstructed for the historical traffic information stored in the traffic information storage unit,

the difference computation unit determines a first difference that is a difference for each road link between the currently provided traffic information and the real-time reconstructed traffic information, and a second difference that is a difference for each road link between the historical traffic information stored in the traffic information storage unit and the historical reconstructed traffic information,

the unexpected incident determination unit determines the presence or absence of an unexpected incident for each road link by comparing the first difference with a threshold defined based on the second difference, and

determined unexpected incident information is distributed to an on-board terminal.

2. The traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein

the correlation information is bases representing a multiple link correlation principal obtained by component analysis for the historical traffic information about each road link, and

the traffic information reconstruction unit reconstructs the traffic information using top bases having a high proportion out of the bases.

3. The traffic information system according to claim 2, wherein

the traffic information reconstruction unit determines the reconstructed traffic information for the input traffic information by linear combination of the bases and weighting coefficients obtained by performing projection of the input traffic information onto a feature space formed of the bases.

4. The traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the unexpected incident information comprises flag information indicating the presence or absence of an unexpected incident for each road link, and deviation degree information indicating a value of the first difference.

5. The traffic information system according to claim 4, wherein the on-board terminal receives the deviation degree information in the unexpected incident information and displays a road link corresponding to an unexpected incident with a line of varying hue, saturation, or brightness according to the deviation degree information so that the scale of the unexpected incident is represented according to the deviation degree information.

6. The traffic information system according to claim 2, wherein

the difference computation unit computes difference statistical traffic information obtained by statistically processing the second difference, and

the threshold is defined based on the difference statistical traffic information.

7. The traffic information system according to claim 6, wherein the difference statistical traffic information is information in which time-series traffic information data of the second difference is classified by a day factor including classification of weekday and holiday, and for each class of the day factor, statistical values including an average value, a standard deviation, and a maximum value at the same times of day are determined.