Yucheng Zhang (yucheng@uakron.edu )

and

Ping Yi, Assistant Professor (pyi@uakron.edu)

Department of Civil Engineering,

University of Akron,

Akron, OH 44325 – 3905

With the advancement of computer and information technologies, more people than ever before rely on accurate traffic information for trip planning and guidance. Although many models have been proposed for real-time traffic prediction, much of the work considers traffic congestions due to construction and incidents. An effort to assess the impact of special events in an urban area is lacking.

This research proposes to develop a prototype model for traffic analysis under special events. Because special events create spatial and temporal effects on the traffic network, a small network around the activity center is built using a GIS system according to the extended impact along the roadway links where the most and least influencing time durations for the specific activity are identified. A methodology is proposed to calibrate the traffic impact on each link in each time period based on field data. The output of the calibration contains the spatial and temporal influencing factors that can be applied to traffic flow parameters under normal operation conditions.