Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems

Technology, Planning, and Operations

ISSN: 1547-2450 (Print) 1547-2442 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gits20

Vehicle sensor data-based transportation

research: Modeling, analysis, and management

Zhengbing He, Jia Hu, B. Brian Park & Michael W. Levin

To cite this article: Zhengbing He, Jia Hu, B. Brian Park & Michael W. Levin (2019) Vehicle
sensor data-based transportation research: Modeling, analysis, and management, Journal of
Intelligent Transportation Systems, 23:2, 99-102, DOI: 10.1080/15472450.2019.1586335

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15472450.2019.1586335

Published online: 18 Mar 2019.

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JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
2019, VOL. 23, NO. 2, 99–102
https://doi.org/10.1080/15472450.2019.1586335

EDITORIAL

Vehicle sensor data-based transportation research: Modeling, analysis,

and management
Zhengbing Hea , Jia Hub , B. Brian Parkc , and Michael W. Levind
a
Beijing Key Laboratory of Traffic Engineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China; bKey Laboratory of Road and Traffic
Engineering of the Ministry of Education, College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China; cLink Lab &
Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA; dDepartment of Civil,
Environmental, and Geo-Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Introduction utilizing VSD are emerging. They could deepen our

In the era of information and communications technol-
ogy and big data, roadway traffic is being monitored by
various sensors. Notably, sensors equipped in vehicles, as
shown in Figure 1, are providing various Vehicle Sensor
Data (VSD) including location-based data (LB-VSD) such
as location, speed, and moving direction, and surrounding
traffic data (ST-VSD) under Connected and Automated
Vehicles (CAV) environment. LB-VSD is often referred
to as floating car data or probe vehicle data due to the
operation mode that the sensor-equipped vehicles travel
on roads as regular vehicles. Passenger’s mobile phones
and GPS on taxis/buses are continuously producing a
gigantic amount of such data, which makes LB-VSD
become widely available. In terms of making better use of
them, one could trace driver/passenger’s route (or activ-
ity/trip chain); collect link or trip travel time; estimate
traffic state; and model/optimize car-hailing services.
Moreover, LB-VSD could provide data support for vari-
ous traffic control and management systems. ST-VSD is
provided by the on-board sensors that are able to monitor
adjacent traffic conditions. It includes, but is not limited
to, radar data, LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR)
data, Controller Area Network (CAN) bus data, and data
transmitted via Dedicated Short Range Communication
(DSRC) or cellular network. The data provides opportuni-
ties to explicitly model traffic flow and design comfortable
and environmentally friendly CAV driving strategies, or
to develop advanced traffic management and control
strategies in a CAV environment.
understanding of traffic congestion and traveler behavior,
as well as improve the efficiency and capability of traffic
control and management. This Special Issue is thus
focused on the recent advances in various transportation
research areas including data quality, human behavior,
transportation operations, and policy analysis by taking
advantage of the widely available VSD-based data.
Data quality
This Special Issue starts off by providing an overview
of the quality of VSD-based data that is commercially
available in the market. Ahsani, Amin-Naseri,
Knickerbocker, and Sharma (in press) investigated
VSD-based data made available by INRIX and shed
light on the quality of data, including coverage, speed
bias, and congestion detection precision. The study
concluded that: (i) INRIX data covers Interstate high-
ways reliably and is more reliable during day time. In
addition, there is a trend toward coverage expansion
over the years; (ii) travel time information is trust-
worthy only when hundred percent real-time data are
utilized. Travel time based on historical data, even par-
tially, is not accurate; (iii) INRIX data does not perform
well for congestion detection on segments shorter than
0.4 miles. For segments that are longer than 0.4 miles,
the precision rate is 81.6% for identifying recurring
congestion and 51.2% for non-recurring congestion.

Developments in vehicle sensor Human behavior

data-based research
A number of ways that VSD-based data can be poten-
There is a need to utilize emerging VSD-based big tially made use of are identified in this Special Issue.
data. Advanced tools and innovative ideas/applications It can be used for human behavior modeling. In

CONTACT Zhengbing He he.zb@hotmail.com; Jia Hu hujia@tongji.edu.cn; B. Brian Park bp6v@virginia.edu; Michael Levin mlevin@umn.edu
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/gits.
ß 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
100 Z. HE ET AL.
Figure 1. On-board vehicle sensors.
Chen, Zhou, and Li (in press), radar data are applied
in predicting Red-Light-Running (RLR) behavior. The
behavior prediction includes the vehicle’s stop-or-go
choice and vehicle’s arrival time at the stop line. RLR
is the major cause of collision at intersections leading
to numerous fatalities and injuries. These costs can be
effectively reduced by more accurate RLR prediction.
In the past, RLR behavior is typically predicted utiliz-
ing data generated by loop detectors which is costly to
maintain and provides inaccurate information. With
radar data, RLR prediction can be greatly improved.
The data is first translated into vehicle trajectory and
then fed into a Bayesian network model for stop-or-
go choice prediction. The prediction results are com-
pared against those based on loop detector data and
show at least 20% higher accuracy.
In Hu, Yuan, Zhu, Yang, and Xie (in press), an
improvement on detour behavior modeling is made
possible by VSD-based data. In the study, GPS trajec-
tory data tagged by driver ID is collected both before
and after a lane closure event on MoPac Expressway,
Austin, TX. By taking advantage of this informative
data, travelers’ detour behavior under the impact of
work zone is revealed which is not feasible in the past
when only fixed-location sensors are available. It is
learned that detour pattern is intensively impacted by
factors, including trip start time, length of trip, dis-
tance to the freeway of first choice and distance to the
freeway of the second choice. The proposed method is
also capable of identifying potential detour patterns
preferred by the drivers. This information that was
not available in the past can be crucial for decision-
makers in order to be prepared for unexpected events.
Quantifying driving style differences between
indoor simulators and on-road instrumented vehicles
is made possible by VSD-based data. Simulators have
always been a crucial tool for human behavior ana-
lysis. As a start, simulators are much more time effi-
cient compared with conducting field tests. In
addition, some hazardous scenarios are only feasible
in simulation, considering the safety of the human
subject. Furthermore, simulator results are more easily
replicable while field tests are more difficult to repli-
cate. However, there has always been doubts about
how valid and representative simulator results are
compared with real world. By collecting maneuver
data from the same driver operating both an indoor
vehicle simulator and an on-road instrumented
vehicle, Qi, Guan, Li, Hounsell, and Stanton (in press)
were able to answer the question of consistency
between the two and discovered that human drivers
are more aggressive in the simulator than in real
world, as greater accelerations and decelerations are
observed in simulators.
Operations
VSD-based data can be beneficial to traffic operations
as well. As demonstrated in Kuang, Yan, Zhu, Tu,
and Fan (in press), VSD-based data could be poten-
tially used to help collision event duration prediction.
The collision event duration prediction is important,
since collisions typically leads to congestion. More
accurate duration prediction could help traffic oper-
ator to provide more appropriate countermeasures,
such as emergency response, traffic rerouting, and
speed harmonization. The VSD-based data can cap-
ture various crash features including time of day, day
of week, severity and number of vehicles involved in
the crash. In the study, various features were then
used to compare against historical records and gener-
ated event duration prediction by applying a two-level

model consisting of a Bayesian network and a
weighted KNN regression model. By comparing
against conventional methods, the proposed method
improved the accuracy rate by 3.8% and reduced mis-
classification rate by 13.8%.
Public transportation is one of the most important
solutions to traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and
pollution. Among various types of public transporta-
tion, public transit plays a major role. However, the
uncertainty of when a bus will arrive has always been
a challenge and casts anxieties on passengers which
pushes away potential users of public transit. Dai, Ma,
and Chen (in press) proposed a transit travel time
prediction model that takes advantage of VSD-based
data. The prediction model was enhanced by consid-
ering information obtained from link travel time and
station dwell times. By using VSD-based data, a prob-
abilistic model was developed to describe the inter-
action between buses approaching a bus bay. With
more accurate estimation of link travel time and dwell
time, transit travel time is predicted with much
higher precision.
Policy
Finally, VSD-based data could be crucial for decision
makers. In Zhai et al. (in press), VSD-based data are
utilized to quantify operating mode distribution for
light duty vehicles. Operating mode distribution is
one of the most critical inputs for MOVES model
which was developed by the United States
Environmental Protection Agency and is one of the
most well accepted methods for real-time microscopic
traffic emissions estimation. It was discovered that
VSD-based operating mode distribution is crucial to
be adopted. The distribution is greatly affected by fac-
tors, including road type, average and vehicle type.
Ignoring these factors may lead to errors of up to
20% in emissions estimation. The study also provided
a collection of valuable data of the operating mode
distribution in Beijing, China which could be made
use of by future studies or decision makers.
Summary
The articles published in this Special Issue provide an
overview of the state-of-the-art theoretical and prac-
tical developments on VSD-based data: VSD-based
human/driver mobility characteristics and its implica-
tion on emissions estimation; driving behaviors have
been investigated in terms of red-light running predic-
tion, traveler responses to pre-planned road capacity
JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS 101
reduction, and driving style differences between oper-
ating indoor driving simulators and on-road instru-
mented vehicles; methods have been developed for
transit travel time prediction using VSD-based data;
and finally, VSD-based data quality has been evaluated
in terms of coverage and detection accuracy. It is clear
that the potential is huge for VSD-based data to play
a major role in future transportation planning, opera-
tions, and management. As the roll-out of Connected
Vehicle technology, the coverage of VSD-based data is
expected to expand, so does the impact of such data.
It is our hope that the research published in this
Special Issue will serve as a motivation for mining of
VSD-based data and help various parties gain max-
imum benefits from their deployment of interest.
Acknowledgment
The coeditors of this Special Issue would like to thank
anonymous referees for their hard work in meticulously
reviewing the papers submitted for publication review. We
also thank the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Asad Khattak for his
help during the initiation and review process of this spe-
cial issue.
ORCID
Zhengbing He http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5716-3853
Jia Hu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1350-6030
B. Brian Park https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4597-6368
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102 Z. HE ET AL.
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