Comparative Analysis of Robustness of Centralized and Distributed Network Route Control Systems in Incident Situations

Abstract

A procedure for providing real-time route guidance in congested vehicular traffic networks is described. The control procedure, implementable in a decentralized scheme, envisions a set of distributed local controllers in the network in which every controller can extract only limited information from detectors. The assignment logic is driven by informed local search procedures and heuristics. A simulation-assignment model was developed and used to assess the effectiveness and robustness of the procedure in dealing with normal as well as incident traffic conditions. A comparative study was undertaken to gauge the performance of the distributed control structure against a benchmark scenario of the time-dependent system-optimal logic in a centralized architecture. The assessment was conducted under various operational scenarios of different incident links, durations, and severity. The findings of the simulation-based experiments indicated that the distributed scheme is more robust than the centralized time-dependent scheme under incident conditions.