The Crash Modification Factor (CMF) clearinghouse can be used to estimate benefits for specific highway safety countermeasures. It assists safety professionals in the allocation of investments. The clearinghouse contains over 7000 entries of which only 446 are categorized as intelligent transportation systems or advanced technology, but none directly address connected or autonomous vehicles (CAVs). Further, the effectiveness of highway safety countermeasures is assumed to remain constant over time, an assumption that is particularly problematic as new technologies are introduced. For example, for the existing fleet of human-driven vehicles, installation of rumble strip can potentially reduce “run-off-road” crashes by 40%. If specific CAV technologies, e.g., lane-tracking, can work without rumble strips, and say, half of all cars are so equipped, only half of the fleet will benefit, reducing the benefits of rumble strips by a commensurate amount. Benefits of the two improvements, e.g., rumble strips and automated vehicles, should not be double-counted. As there will still be human-driven and/or non-connected vehicles in the fleet, conventional countermeasures are still necessary, although returns on conventional safety investments may be significantly overestimated. This is important as safety investments should be optimized and geared to future, not past fleets. Moreover, as CMFs are based on historical events, the types of crashes experienced by human-driven, un-connected cars are likely to be much different in the future. This research presents methods to estimate the safety benefits that autonomous vehicles have to offer and the changes needed in CMFs as a result of their adoption. This will primarily be achieved by modifying and enhancing a tool co-developed by the Fellow that estimates the safety benefits of different levels of autonomy. This tool, ddSAFCAT, estimates CAV safety benefits using real-world data for crashes, market penetration, and effectiveness.

Les intersections sont les zones les plus dangereuses du réseau routier. Les statistiques montrent que la plupart des accidents aux intersections sont causés par des erreurs des conducteurs, et que la plupart pourraient être évités à l'aide de systèmes d'aide à la conduite. En particulier, les communications inter-véhiculaires ouvrent de nouvelles opportunités pour les applications sécuritaires aux intersections. Le partage d'informations entre les véhicules via des liens sans fil permet aux véhicules de percevoir leur environnement au-delà des limites du champ de vision des capteurs embarqués. Grâce à cette représentation élargie de l'environnement dans l'espace et dans le temps, la compréhension de situation est améliorée et les situations dangereuses peuvent être détectées plus tôt. Cette thèse aborde le problème de l'estimation du risque aux intersections d'un nouveau point de vue : une structure de raisonnement est proposée pour analyser les situations routières et le risque de collision à un niveau sémantique plutôt qu'au niveau des trajectoires. Le risque est déterminé en estimant les intentions des conducteurs et en identifiant les potentiels conflits, sans avoir à prédire les futures trajectoires des véhicules. L'approche proposée a été validée par des expérimentations en environnement réel à l'aide de véhicules équipés de modems de communication véhicule-véhicule, ainsi qu'en simulation. Les résultats montrent que l'algorithme permet de détecter les situations dangereuses à l'avance et qu'il respecte les contraintes temps-réel des applications sécuritaires. Il y a deux différences principales entre l'approche proposée et les travaux existants. Premièrement, l'étape de prédiction de trajectoire est évitée. Les situations dangereuses sont identifiées en comparant ce que les conducteurs ont l'intention de faire avec ce qui est attendu d'eux d'après les règles de la circulation et le contexte. Le raisonnement sur les intentions et les attentes est réalisé de manière probabiliste afin de prendre en compte les incertitudes des mesures capteur et les ambiguïtés sur l'interprétation. Deuxièmement, le modèle proposé prend en compte les informations sur le contexte situationnel, c'est-à-dire que l'influence de la géométrie de l'intersection et des actions des autres véhicules est prise en compte lors de l'analyse du comportement d'un véhicule. / Intersections are the most complex and dangerous areas of the road network. Statistics show that most road intersection accidents are caused by driver error and that many of them could be avoided through the use of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. In particular, vehicular communications open new opportunities for safety applications at road intersections. The sharing of information between vehicles over wireless links allows vehicles to perceive their environment beyond the field-of-view of their on-board sensors. Thanks to this enlarged representation of the environment in time and space, situation assessment is improved and dangerous situations can be detected earlier. This thesis tackles the problem of risk estimation at road intersections from a new perspective: a framework is proposed for reasoning about traffic situations and collision risk at a semantic level instead of at a trajectory level. Risk is assessed by estimating the intentions of drivers and looking for conflicts in them, rather than by predicting the future trajectories of the vehicles and looking for intersections between them. The proposed approach was validated in field trials using passenger vehicles equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communication modems, and in simulation. The results demonstrate that this algorithm allows the early detection of dangerous situations in a reliable manner and complies with real-time constraints. The proposed approach differs from previous works in two key aspects. Firstly, it does not rely on trajectory prediction to assess the risk of a situation. Dangerous situations are identified by comparing what drivers intend to do with what they are expected to do according to the traffic rules and the current context. The reasoning about intentions and expectations is performed in a probabilistic manner to take into account sensor uncertainties and interpretation ambiguities. Secondly, the proposed motion model includes information about the situational context. Both the layout of the intersection and the actions of other vehicles are taken into account as factors influencing the behavior of a vehicle.

Advanced modeling tools and methods are essential components for the analyses of congested conditions and advanced Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) strategies such as Managed Lanes (ML). A number of tools with different analysis resolution levels have been used to assess these strategies. These tools can be classified as sketch planning, macroscopic simulation, mesoscopic simulation, microscopic simulation, static traffic assignment, and dynamic traffic assignment tools. Due to the complexity of the managed lane modeling process, this dissertation investigated a Multi-Resolution Modeling (MRM) approach that combines a number of these tools for more efficient and accurate assessment of ML deployments. This study clearly demonstrated the differences in the accuracy of the results produced by the traffic flow models incorporated into different tools when compared with real-world measurements. This difference in the accuracy highlighted the importance of the selection of the appropriate analysis levels and tools that can better estimate ML and General Purpose Lanes (GPL) performance. The results also showed the importance of calibrating traffic flow model parameters, demand matrices, and assignment parameters based on real-world measurements to ensure accurate forecasts of real-world traffic conditions. In addition, the results indicated that the real-world utilization of ML by travelers can be best predicated with the use of dynamic traffic assignment modeling that incorporates travel time, toll, and travel time reliability of alternative paths in the assignment objective function. The replication of the specific dynamic pricing algorithm used in the real-world in the modeling process was also found to provide the better forecast of ML utilization. With regards to Connected Vehicle (CV) operations on ML, this study demonstrated the benefits of using results from tools with different modeling resolution to support each other’s analyses. In general, the results showed that providing toll incentives for Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC)-equipped vehicles to use ML is not beneficial at lower market penetrations of CACC due to the small increase in capacity with these market penetrations. However, such incentives were found to be beneficial at higher market penetrations, particularly with higher demand levels.

Un véhicule autonome et connecté (ACV – pour Autonomous Connected Vehicle ) est un système cyber-physique où le monde réel et l’espace numérique virtuel se fusionnent. Ce type de véhicule requiert un processus de validation rigoureuse commençant à la phase de conception et se poursuivant même après le déploiement du logiciel. Un nouveau paradigme est apparu pour le monitorat continu des exécutions des logiciels afin d'autoriser des adaptations automatiquement en temps réel, systématiquement lors d’une détection de changement dans l'environnement d'exécution, d’une panne ou d’un bug. Ce paradigme s’intitule : « Models@Run.time ». Cette thèse s’inscrit dans le cadre des ACVs et plus particulièrement dans le contexte des véhicules qui collaborent et qui partagent leurs données d’une manière sécurisée. Plusieurs approches de modélisation sont déjà utilisées pour exprimer les exigences relatives au contrôle d'accès afin d’imposer des politiques de sécurité. Toutefois, leurs outils de validation ne tiennent pas compte les impacts de l'interaction entre les exigences fonctionnelles et les exigences de sécurité. Cette interaction peut conduire à des violations de sécurité inattendues lors de l'exécution du système ou lors des éventuelles adaptations à l’exécution. En outre, l’estimation en temps réel de l’état de trafic utilisant des données de type crowdsourcing pourrait être utilisée pour les adaptations aux modèles de coopération des AVCs. Cette approche n'a pas encore été suffisamment étudiée dans la littérature. Pour pallier à ces limitations, de nombreuses questions doivent être abordées:• L'évolution des exigences fonctionnelles du système doit être prise en compte lors de la validation des politiques de sécurité ainsi que les scénarios d'attaque doivent être générés automatiquement.• Une approche pour concevoir et détecter automatiquement les anti-patrons (antipatterns) de sécurité doit être développée. En outre, de nouvelles reconfigurations pour les politiques de contrôle d'accès doivent également être identifiées, validées et déployées efficacement à l'exécution.• Les ACVs doivent observer et analyser leur environnement, qui contient plusieurs flux de données dite massives (Big Data) pour proposer de nouveaux modèles de coopération, en temps réel.Dans cette thèse, une approche pour la surveillance de l'environnement des ACVs est proposée. L’approche permet de valider les politiques de contrôle d'accès et de les reconfigurer en toute sécurité. La contribution de cette thèse consiste à:• Guider les Model Checkers de sécurité pour trouver automatiquement les scénarios d'attaque dès la phase de conception.• Concevoir des anti-patterns pour guider le processus de validation, et développer un algorithme pour les détecter automatiquement lors des reconfigurations des modèles.• Construire une approche pour surveiller en temps réel les flux de données dynamiques afin de proposer des adaptations de la politique d'accès lors de l'exécution.L’approche proposée a été validée en utilisant plusieurs exemples liés aux ACVs, et les résultats des expérimentations prouvent la faisabilité de cette approche. / Autonomous Connected Vehicles (ACVs) are Cyber-physical systems (CPS) where the computationalworld and the real one meet. These systems require a rigorous validation processthat starts at design phase and continues after the software deployment. Models@Runtimehas appeared as a new paradigm for continuously monitoring software systems execution inorder to enable adaptations whenever a change, a failure or a bug is introduced in the executionenvironment. In this thesis, we are going to tackle ACVs environment where vehicles tries tocollaborate and share their data in a secure manner.Different modeling approaches are already used for expressing access control requirementsin order to impose security policies. However, their validation tools do not consider the impactsof the interaction between the functional and the security requirements. This interaction canlead to unexpected security breaches during the system execution and its potential runtimeadaptations. Also, the real-time prediction of traffic states using crowd sourcing data could beuseful for proposition adaptations to AVCs cooperation models. Nevertheless, it has not beensufficiently studied yet. To overcome these limitations, many issues should be addressed:• The evolution of the system functional part must be considered during the validation ofthe security policy and attack scenarios must be generated automatically.• An approach for designing and automatically detecting security anti-patterns might bedeveloped. Furthermore, new reconfigurations for access control policies also must befound, validated and deployed efficiently at runtime.• ACVs need to observe and analyze their complex environment, containing big-datastreams to recommend new cooperation models, in near real-time.In this thesis, we build an approach for sensing the ACVs environment, validating its accesscontrol models and securely reconfiguring it on the fly. We cover three aspects:• We propose an approach for guiding security models checkers to find the attack scenariosat design time automatically.• We design anti-patterns to guide the validation process. Then, we develop an algorithmto detect them automatically during models reconfigurations. Also, we design a mechanismfor reconfiguring the access control model and we develop a lightweight modularframework for an efficient deployment of new reconfigurations.• We build an approach for the real-time monitoring of dynamic data streams to proposeadaptations for the access policy at runtime.Our proposed approach was validated using several examples related o ACVs. the results ofour experimentations prove the feasibility of this approach.

With the rapid advances of technology, digitisation of many facets of our existence is taking place in an attempt to improve everyday life. The automotive industry is following suit, attempting to introduce connected traffic technology that is meant to improve traffic fluidity and safety. To facilitate this, connected vehicles aim to create solutions for the sharing of information between other vehicles, infrastructure - such as traffic light controllers, and pedestrians. In an attempt to further investigate the connected vehicle landscape of today, the thesis compared the two most prominent technologies, DSRC and cellular communication. An essential part of this comparison was highlighting the potential attacks that the two technologies could be exposed to. This was done in order to open up a discussion on what technology is the most suitable to focus on for the future both in terms of viability and security. DSRC has been considered the prominent communication technology for connected vehicles, but the development has stagnated. As such, the ever-evolving cellular technology is looking like the superior technology. This, however, is reliant on 5G delivering the speeds, stability and security promised. The state of constant vehicular connection is going to lead to many issues and concerns, both for the privacy of the individual but also the safety of the public. While connected traffic aims to solve a number of issues from traffic accidents to emissions - if the security of the communication is not constantly evolving to meet the rapid development of new technology, the consequences of connecting such a delicate system might nullify the potential benefits.

<div>Advances in information and communication technologies enable new paradigms for connectivity involving vehicles, infrastructure, and the broader road transportation system environment. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications under the aegis of the connected vehicle are being leveraged for novel applications related to traffic safety, management, and control, which lead to a V2V-based traffic system. Within the framework of a V2V-based traffic system, this study proposes an integrated modeling framework to model the dynamics of a V2V-based traffic system that entails spatiotemporal interdependencies among the traffic flow dynamics, V2V communication constraints, the dynamics of information flow propagation, and V2V-based application. The proposed framework systematically exploits their spatiotemporal interdependencies by theoretical and computational approaches.</div><div>First, a graph-based multi-layer framework is proposed to model the V2V-based advanced traveler information system (ATIS) as a complex system which is comprised of coupled network layers. This framework addresses the dynamics of each physical vehicular traffic flow, inter-vehicle communication, and information flow propagation components within a layer, while capturing their interactions among layers. This enables the capabilities to transparently understand the spatiotemporal evolution of information flow propagation through a graph structure. A novel contribution is the systematic modeling of an evolving information flow network that is characterized as the manifestation of spatiotemporal events in the other two networks to enhance the understanding of the information flow evolution by capturing the dynamics of the interactions involving the traffic flow and the inter-vehicle communication layers. The graph-based approach enables the computationally efficient tracking of information propagation using a simple graph-based search algorithm and the computationally efficient storage of information through a single graph database.</div><div>Second, this dissertation proposes analytical approaches that enable theoretical investigation into the qualitative properties of information flow propagation speed. The proposed analytical models, motivated from spatiotemporal epidemiology, introduce the concept of an information flow propagation wave (IFPW) to facilitate the analysis of the information propagation characteristics and impacts of traffic dynamics at a macroscopic level. The first model consists of a system of difference equations in the discrete-space and discrete-time domains where an information dissemination is described in the upper layer and a vehicular traffic flow is modeled in the lower layer. This study further proposes a continuous-space and continuous-time analytical model that can provide a closed-form solution for the IFPW speed to establish an analytical relationship between the IFPW speed and the underlying traffic flow dynamics. It can corporate the effects of congested traffic, such as the backward traffic propagation wave, on information flow propagation. Thereby, it illustrates the linkage between information flow propagation and the underlying traffic dynamics. Further, it captures V2V communication constraints in a realistic manner using a probabilistic communication kernel (which captures the probability).<br></div><div>Third, within the integrated modeling framework, this dissertation captures the impact of information flow propagation on traffic safety and control applications. The proposed multi-anticipative forward collision warning system predicts the driver’s maneuver intention using a coupled hidden Markov model, which is one of statistical machine learning techniques. It significantly reduces the false alarm rates by addressing the uncertainty associate improves the performance of the future motion prediction, while currently available sensor-based kinematic models for addressing the uncertainty associated with the future motion prediction. A network-level simulation framework is developed to investigate a V2V-based ATIS in a large-scale network by capturing its inter-dependencies and feedback loop. This modeling framework provides the understanding of the relationship between the travelers’ routing decisions and information flow propagation.</div><div>This thesis provides a holistic understanding of information flow propagation characteristics in space and time by characterizing interactions among information flow propagation, and underlying traffic flow, and V2V communications characteristics. The proposed models and the closed-form solution of IFPW speed can help in designing effective V2V-based traffic systems, without relying on computationally expensive numerical methods. An innovative aspect of this approach represents a building block to develop both descriptive capabilities and prescriptive strategies related to propagating the flow of useful information efficiently and synergistically generating routing mechanisms that enhance the traffic network performance. Given the lack of appropriate methodologies to characterize the information flow propagation, this thesis expects to make a novel and significant contribution to understanding the characteristics of V2V-based traffic systems and their analysis.</div>

No description available.

Intelligent transport systems are preparing to welcome connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), although it is uncertain which algorithms should be employed for the effective and efficient management of CAV systems. Even though remarkable improvements in telecommunication technologies, such as vehicle-to-everything (V2X), enable communication and computation sharing among different agents, e.g. vehicles and infrastructures, within existing approaches, a significant part of the computation burden is still typically assigned to central units. Distributed algorithms, on the other hand, could alleviate traffic units from most, if not all, of the high dimensional calculation duties, while improving security and remaining effective. In this paper, we propose a formation-control-inspired distributed algorithm to rearrange vehicles’ passing time periods through an intersection and a novel formulation of the underlying trajectory optimization problem so that vehicles need to exchange and process only a limited amount of information. We include early simulation results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Vehicle stops and speed variations account for a large percentage of vehicle fuel losses especially at signalized intersections. Recently, researchers have attempted to develop tools that reduce these losses by capitalizing on traffic signal information received via vehicle connectivity with traffic signal controllers. Existing state-of-the-art approaches, however, only consider surrogate measures (e.g. number of vehicle stops, time spent accelerating and decelerating, and/or acceleration or deceleration levels) in the objective function and fail to explicitly optimize vehicle fuel consumption levels. Furthermore, the majority of these models do not capture vehicle acceleration and deceleration limitations in addition to vehicle-to-vehicle interactions as constraints within the mathematical program. The connectivity between vehicles and infrastructure, as achieved through Connected Vehicles technology, can provide a vehicle with information that was not possible before. For example, information on traffic signal changes, traffic slow-downs and even headway and speed of lead vehicles can be shared. The research proposed in this dissertation uses this information and advanced computational models to develop fuel-efficient vehicle trajectories, which can either be used as guidance for drivers or can be attached to an electronic throttle controlled cruise control system. This fuel-efficient cruise control system is known as an Eco-Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (ECACC) system. In addition to the ECACC presented here, the research also expands on some of the key eco-driving concepts such as fuel-optimizing acceleration models, which could be used in conjunction with conventional vehicles and even autonomous vehicles, or assistive systems that are being implemented in vehicles. The dissertation first presents the results from an on-line survey soliciting driver input on public perceptions of in-vehicle assistive devices. The results of the survey indicate that user-acceptance to systems that enhance safety and efficiency is ranked high. Driver–willingness to use advanced in-vehicle technology and cellphone applications is also found to be subjective on what benefits it has to offer and safety and efficiency are found to be in the top list. The dissertation then presents the algorithmic development of an Eco-Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control system. The modeling of the system constitutes a modified state-of-the-art path-finding algorithm within a dynamic programming framework to find near-optimal and near-real-time solutions to a complex non-linear programming problem that involves minimizing vehicle fuel consumption in the vicinity of signalized intersections. The results demonstrated savings of up to 30 percent in fuel consumption within the traffic signalized intersection vicinity. The proposed system was tested in an agent-based environment developed in MATLAB using the RPA car-following model as well as the Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE) J2735 message set standards for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. The results showed how multi-vehicle interaction enhances usability of the system. Simulation of a calibrated real intersection showed average fuel savings of nearly 30 percent for peak volumes. The fuel reduction was high for low volumes and decreased as the traffic volumes increased. The final testing of the algorithm was done in an enhanced Traffic Experimental Simulation tool (eTEXAS) that incorporates the conventional TEXAS model with a new web-service interface as well as connected vehicle message set dictionary. This testing was able to demonstrate model corrections required to negate the effect of system latencies as well as a demonstration of using SAE message set parsing in a connected vehicle application. Finally, the dissertation develops an integrated framework for the control of autonomous vehicle movements through intersections using a multi-objective optimization algorithm. The algorithm integrated within an existing framework that minimizes vehicle delay while ensuring vehicles do not collide. A lower-level of control is introduced that minimizes vehicle fuel consumption subject to the arrival times assigned by the upper-level controller. Results show that the eco-speed control algorithm was able to reduce the overall fuel-consumption of autonomous vehicles passing through an intersection by 15 percent while maintaining the 80 percent saving in delay when compared to a traditional signalized intersection control. / Ph. D.

This research study focused on the development and subsequent evaluation of an in-vehicle Active Traffic and Demand Management (ATDM) system deployed on I-66. The ATDM elements inside the vehicle allowed drivers to remain consistently aware of traffic conditions and roadway requirements even if external signage was inaccessible. Forty participants were accompanied by a member of the research team and experienced the following features from the in-vehicle device (IVD): 1) dynamic speed limits, 2) dynamic lane use/shoulder control, 3) High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) restrictions, and 4) variable message signs (VMS). This system was equipped with auditory and visual alerts to notify the driver when relevant information was updated. The research questions addressed distraction, desirability, and driver behavior associated with the system. Participant data was collected from the instrumented vehicle, various surveys, and researcher observation. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey-Kramer tests were performed to analyze participant eye glance durations towards the IVD and instrument cluster. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to draw conclusions from participant speed data and some survey responses. Several key findings were uncovered related to each research category: 1) the IVD would not be classified as a distraction according to NHTSA distraction guidelines, 2) seventy-three percent of participants would want the in-vehicle technology in their next vehicle, and 3) the speed limit alert motivated participants to alter their speed (based on both survey results and actual participant speed data). / Master of Science