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 Author's personal copy

Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Transportation Research Part C

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/trc

A wavelet-based freeway incident detection algorithm with adapting

threshold parameters
Young-Seon Jeong a, Manoel Castro-Neto b, Myong K. Jeong a,c,*, Lee D. Han d
a
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
b
Department of Transportation Engineering, Federal University of Ceara, Fortaleza, CE, 60455-760, Brazil
c
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Technology, Daejon 305-701, Korea
d
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Perkins Hall 223, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a wavelet-based novel freeway automated incident detection algo-
Received 11 August 2008 rithm with varying threshold parameters considering the level of traffic flow. In this
Received in revised form 23 October 2009 approach, new test statistics for incident detection are extracted from occupancy and
Accepted 30 October 2009
speed data using discrete wavelet transform, which decomposes traffic measurements into
different resolution-time components. Unlike conventional incident detection algorithms,
which apply fixed threshold values and often result in undesirably high false alarm rates,
Keywords:
our proposed algorithm varies its threshold values adaptively based on the level of traffic
Freeway operations
Incident detection algorithms
volume. We have derived the mathematical relationship between the false alarm probabil-
Multi-resolution analysis ity and the threshold value of our proposed decision function. For a given target false alarm
Wavelets rate, the threshold values can be changed adaptively depending on the traffic levels of nor-
Varying threshold value mal traffic conditions. Also, we propose the new feature selection technique to measure the
quality of different features that may be used to discriminate between normal and incident
traffic conditions. Using both simulated data set and real-life incident data set, the perfor-
mance of our proposed algorithm was compared with existing popular approaches such as
California algorithm, Minnesota algorithm, conventional neural networks algorithm, and a
wavelet-based neural-net algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed wave-
let-based algorithm consistently outperformed others with a higher detection rate, lower
false alarm rate, and shorter mean time to detection. It is conclusive that the proposed
algorithm is a superior alternative to existing algorithms.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The functionality of automatically detecting incidents on freeways is a primary objective of advanced traffic management
systems (ATMS), an integral component of the Nation’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Because traffic incidents,
e.g. vehicular crashes, on freeways often result in serious injuries, if not fatalities, as well as extensive traffic congestion
and protracted delay, accurate and prompt incident detection is crucial to the timely response to such emergencies in order
to save lives, prevent secondary incidents, and restore normal operations in a timely fashion.
Since the1970s, a number of automated incident detection (AID) algorithms based on data from inductive loop detectors
have been developed. In the early years, California and Minnesota algorithms (Payne and Tignor, 1978; Stephanedes and Chas-
siakos, 1993) were regarded as the most notable and are still used for benchmarking newer algorithms. Other models based on
traffic flow theory (Kuhne, 1989), knowledge-based expert system (Han and May, 1990), catastrophe theory (Persuad and Hall,

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 732 445 4858; fax: +1 732 445 5472.
E-mail address: mjeong@rci.rutgers.edu (M.K. Jeong).

0968-090X/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.trc.2009.10.005
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2 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

1989) and time-series techniques (Ahmed and Cook, 1982) were also proposed in the 1980s. Over the past decade, several ad-
vanced techniques for AID have been tested; these include artificial neural networks (Chen and Ritchie, 1995; Dia and Rose,
1997; Cheu et al., 2004; Abdulhai and Ritchie, 1999; Jin et al., 2002), partial least squares regression (Wang et al., 2008), fuzzy
logic (Lee et al., 1998; Hawas, 2007), Bayesian approaches (Thomas, 1998; Zhang and Taylor, 2006), and combinations (fusion)
of algorithms (Ishak and Al-Deek, 1998; Mak and Fan, 2006a). However, somewhat disappointingly, as pointed out by Williams
and Guin (2007), these newer algorithms’ higher than desirable false alarm rate (FAR) and their need for complex and painstak-
ing calibrations, among other factors, have kept them from a wide deployment at ITS traffic management and control centers.
In the early 2000s, wavelet theory was applied to traffic incident detection (Ghosh-Dastidar and Adeli, 2003; Teng and Qi,
2003) because of its superior ability of ‘‘denoising” and extracting new features through the transformation of ‘‘raw” traffic
measurements. Adeli and Samant (2000) and Ghosh-Dastidar and Adeli (2003) proposed the novel wavelet-based neural net-
works, which applied a wavelet transform for effective preprocessing of traffic measurements.
Teng and Qi (2003) utilized wavelet coefficients (finer and coarse level coefficients) directly in detecting changes in traffic
measurements. For the purpose of determining decision-making rules for incident detection, the finest level coefficients
were employed to detect significant and abrupt changes in traffic measurement while the coarser level coefficients were de-
vised to detect global incident trend, where the upstream traffic measurements of occupancy tend to increase as the down-
stream ones decrease in the wake of an incident. However, this algorithm fixes its threshold values for decision-making
regardless of traffic flow rate levels. By adaptively changing these thresholds depending on traffic, a more consistent algo-
rithm performance is produced.
The motivation of this paper is to propose a wavelet-based freeway incident detection algorithm that combines the multi-
resolution property of wavelet transform with varying threshold values. We also present a new feature selection technique
to select the features that gives us good discrimination capability between normal and incident traffic conditions. In addi-
tion, the proposed algorithm adaptively changes its threshold values according to traffic flow rate. Even though the selection

Traffic pattern at 30-sec. interval:

Upstream and downstream

occupancy and speed information

Wavelet multi-resolution analysis:

Discrete wavelet transform

Selection of decision function:

Divergence technique

High DR and low FAR under

different level of traffic flow rate:

Varying threshold values

Incident alarm:

Satisfaction of two decision functions

Fig. 1. Flowchart of the proposed algorithm procedure for freeway incident detection.
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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 3

of optimal threshold values for incident detection algorithms is an important issue for real-world implementation purposes,
there has been little systematic and methodological research in this area. From this perspective, it is advantageous to vary
the threshold values based on traffic flow rate. We also derive the mathematical relationship between the false alarm prob-
ability and the threshold value of our proposed decision function. As a result, our proposed algorithm, which does vary the
threshold values based on traffic condition, yields higher detection rate (DR), lower false alarm rate (FAR) and faster mean
time to detection (MTTD) than other algorithms. Fig. 1 illustrates the flowchart of the proposed algorithm for freeway inci-
dent detection. More details on performance comparisons are presented in Section 3.
This paper is organized into six sections. A brief review of wavelet and multi-resolution wavelet techniques is given in
Section 2. The proposed methodology is presented in Section 3, which is followed by the comparison of the employed algo-
rithms in Section 4. In Section 5, case studies using real-world freeway data are presented. Finally, Section 6 concludes with a
brief summary as well as suggestions of future research directions.

2. Multi-resolution wavelet technique

2.1. Review of wavelet transform

Wavelet transform, which contains time-scale information, has been recognized as a powerful signal analysis tool (Vida-
kovic, 1999; Jeong et al., 2006a). Wavelets are a family of functions derived from two basis functions, /(t) and w(t), known as
the ‘‘father” wavelet and the ‘‘mother” wavelet. If f(t) e L2(R), where L2(R) is the space of square integrable real functions de-
fined on the real line R, f(t) is described as the following:
L L
2X 1 X
J 2X 1
f ðtÞ ¼ cL;k /L;k ðtÞ þ dj;k wj;k ðtÞ ð1Þ
k¼0 j¼L k¼0

where the CL,k and dj,k are the coefficients for the basis function /L,k(t) and wj,k(t), respectively.
It is reasonable to assume that traffic measurements collected over time in normal operation, i.e. non-incident, conditions
can be expressed as:
yðt i Þ ¼ f ðt i Þ þ eðti Þ; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n ð2Þ
where f(ti) is a true traffic measurement and e(ti) are noises following independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) normal
distribution N(0, r2). When a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) W is used for a y, it is expressed by d = Wy, where d is the
wavelet coefficients and W is the wavelet transform matrix.
The interpretation of relationship between time domain and wavelet domain is important for the detection of the change
point in the wavelet domain. Theorem 1 (Jeong et al., 2006b) below provides a clear understanding of the relationship be-
tween time domain and wavelet domain.
Theorem 1. When there is a mean change of traffic measurements such as flow, speed, or occupancy in qi units of r for the time
ti’s in the interval A = (ts, te) with t1 6 ts < ti < te 6 tn, i.e.,

F 0 ðt i Þ þ qi r; t i 2 A
F new ðt i Þ ¼ ð3Þ
F 0 ðt i Þ; elsewhere
wavelet coefficients have the following corresponding shift:
hi;new ¼ hi;0 þ di r; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n ð4Þ
P
where h is a wavelet coefficient and di ¼ j2A qh hij and hij’s are the elements of the DWT matrix W (see Jeong et al. (2006b) for the
proof of Theorem 1).
The importance of Theorem 1 is that it warrants that the locations of changes in the time domain can be detected by ana-
lyzing the wavelet domain.

2.2. Wavelet multi-resolution analysis on freeway incident detection

The general traffic phenomenon after the occurrence of an incident is the slowing down of vehicular speed and the in-
crease in highway occupancy upstream of the incident site. On the other hand, downstream speed will be comparatively fas-
ter and the occupancy lower. Recent incident detection studies (Adeli and Samant, 2000; Samant and Adeli, 2000; Teng and
Qi, 2003) found that wavelet can accurately identify a sharp change in traffic measurements that are obscured by noise. For
example, Adeli and Samant (2000) proposed a wavelet technique to filter out noises and utilized its multi-resolution prop-
erty for incident detection. They selected several wavelet coefficients in different resolution levels by using the filtering
method prior to entering the values into neural network models.
In this paper, the authors apply similar wavelet technique to take advantage of its multi-resolution property for the devel-
opment of a new AID algorithm. Sixteen data points, including the upstream and downstream traffic occupancy and speed
information for 4 min, at 30 s time interval, are used to form the data vector:
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4 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

Table 1
The equations of each wavelet coefficient.

Occupancy measurement Speed measurement

ðyou þyou Þþðyou þyou Þ ðysu þysu Þþðysu þysu Þ
co2;1 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4 cs2;1 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi t5
4
t4

ðyou þyou Þþðyou þyou Þ ðysu þy su

Þþðysu
þysu
Þ
co2;2 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t cs2;2 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t
ðyod þyod Þþðyod þyod Þ ðysd þysd Þþðysd þysd Þ
co2;3 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4 cs2;3 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4
ðyod þyod Þþðyod þyod Þ ðysd þysd Þþðysd þysd Þ
co2;4 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t cs2;4 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t
o ðyou þyou Þþðyou þyou Þ s ðysu þysu Þþðysu þysu Þ
d2;1 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4 d2;1 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4
o ðyou þyou Þþðyou þyou Þ s ðysu þysu Þþðysu þysu Þ
d2;2 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t d2;2 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t
o ðyod þyod Þþðyod þyod Þ s ðysd þysd Þþðysd þysd Þ
d2;3 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4 d2;3 ¼ t7 t6 pffiffi4 t5 t4
o ðyod þyod Þþðyod þyod Þ s ðysd þysd Þþðysd þysd Þ
d2;4 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t d2;4 ¼ t3 t2pffiffi4 t1 t
o ðyou you Þ s ðysu ysu Þ
d1;1 ¼ t7pffiffi2 t6 d1;1 ¼ t7pffiffi2 t6
o ðyou you Þ s ðysu ysu Þ
d1;2 ¼ t5pffiffi2 t4 d1;2 ¼ t5pffiffi2 t4
o ðyou you Þ s ðysu ysu Þ
d1;3 ¼ t3pffiffi2 t2 d1;3 ¼ t3pffiffi2 t2
o ðyou you Þ s ðysu ysu Þ
d1;4 ¼ t1pffiffi2 t d1;4 ¼ t1pffiffi2 t
o ðyod yod Þ s ðysd ysd Þ
d1;5 ¼ t7pffiffi2 t6 d1;5 ¼ t7pffiffi2 t6
o ðyod yod Þ s ðysd ysd Þ
d1;6 ¼ t5pffiffi2 t4 d1;6 ¼ t5pffiffi2 t4
o ðyod yod Þ s ðysd ysd Þ
d1;7 ¼ t3pffiffi2 t2 d1;7 ¼ t3pffiffi2 t2
o ðyod yod Þ s ðysd ysd Þ
d1;8 ¼ t1pffiffi2 t d1;8 ¼ t1pffiffi2 t

h i
OUD ¼ fyou ou ou od od od
t7 ; yt6 ; . . . ; yt ; yt7 ; yt6 ; . . . ; yt g
h i 16
SUD ¼ fysu su su sd sd sd
t7 ; yt6 ; . . . ; yt ; yt7 ; yt6 ; . . . ; yt g
16

where you od su sd
t ; yt ; yt and yt are upstream and downstream occupancy and speed data at time t. If two-level Haar wavelet
(Teng and Qi, 2003) is adopted, its DWT can be expressed as:
h i h i
o o o o o o o o o o o o
DTW OUD ¼ co2;1 ; co2;2 ; co2;3 ; co2;4 ; d2;1 ; d2;2 ; d2;3 ; d2;4 ; d1;1 ; d1;2 ; d1;3 ; d1;4 ; d1;5 ; d1;6 ; d1;7 ; d1;8
h i h i 16
s s s s s s s s s s s s
DTW SUD ¼ cs2;1 ; cs2;2 ; cs2;3 ; cs2;4 ; d2;1 ; d2;2 ; d2;3 ; d2;4 ; d1;1 ; d1;2 ; d1;3 ; d1;4 ; d1;5 ; d1;6 ; d1;7 ; d1;8
16

where cm,n and dm,n are the nth coarser and finer coefficients in scale m, respectively. The equations for these wavelet coef-
ficients are tabulated in Table 1.
Based on the 16 wavelet coefficients, we can develop a new AID algorithm. In Section 3, we will discuss how this new
wavelet-based AID algorithm is developed and evaluate the performance using simulated and real-world incident data.

3. Wavelet-based AID algorithm

This section proposes a new AID algorithm, which integrates wavelet multi-resolution analysis with varying threshold
values. The significant characteristics of the proposed approach will also be presented.

3.1. Extraction of test statistic for incident detection

Traffic measurements have a tendency to change after the occurrence of an incident. For example, occupancy increases
upstream and decreases downstream while the opposite happens to speed. These differences between up- and downstream
traffic measurements have been the basis of most freeway AID algorithms such as the California and the Minnesota ones. The
California algorithm only utilizes current time occupancy information, which may produce high FAR because of dynamic
traffic fluctuations. On the other hand, the Minnesota algorithm employs cumulative sum of differences between up and
downstream occupancies in order to alleviate the high FAR setback commonly yielded by the California algorithm.
In the previous section, 16 wavelet coefficients, which contain multi-resolution information, are presented. Finer coeffi-
cients present the difference between current and previous measurements, which is similar to the decision functions of Cal-
ifornia algorithm, while coarse coefficients illustrate the cumulative sum of traffic measurement for several time windows,
which denotes the core component of the decision functions of Minnesota algorithm.
Based on Table 1, we can define the coarser coefficients as follows (in case of occupancy measurement):
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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 5

   ou 
you ou ou
t7 þ yt6 þ yt5 þ yt4 1 X 4
co2;1 ¼ pffiffiffi ¼ pffiffiffi you
t4jþ1
4 4 j¼1
 ou   ou 
yt3 þ you ou
t2 þ yt1 þ yt 1 X 3
co2;2 ¼ pffiffiffi ¼ pffiffiffi you
tj
4 4 j¼0
 od   od 
yt7 þ yod od
t6 þ yt5 þ yt4 1 X 4
co2;3 ¼ pffiffiffi ¼ pffiffiffi yod
t4jþ1
4 4 j¼1
 od   od 
yt3 þ yod od
t2 þ yt1 þ yt 1 X 3
co2;4 ¼ pffiffiffi ¼ pffiffiffi yod
tj
4 4 j¼0
nP  o nP  o
3 4
Namely, co2;2  co2;4 ¼ p1ffiffi4 j¼0 you od
tj  ytj and co2;1  co2;3 ¼ p1ffiffi4 ou od
j¼1 yt4jþ1  yt4jþ1 .

Therefore, we can obtain several test statistics that are similar to the decision functions of Minnesota algorithm in the
wavelet domain as follows:
For occupancy measurements,
P3  ou 
co2;2  co2;4 p1ffiffi od
i¼0 yti  yti
WMocc ¼ ¼ n 4
o ð5Þ
1
maxfco2;1 ; co2;3 g max p1ffiffi P4 you ; p1ffiffi
P4 od
y
4 i¼1 t4iþ1 4 i¼1 t4iþ1
    P   P4  ou 
3
o o o
c2;2  c2;4  c2;1  c2;3 o pffiffi
1
y ou
 y od
 y  yod
4 i¼0 ti ti i¼1 t4iþ1 t4iþ1
WMocc
2 ¼ ¼ n P P4 od o ð6Þ
maxfco2;1 ; co2;3 g max p1ffiffi 4
y ou
; p1ffiffi
y
4 i¼1 t4iþ1 4 i¼1 t4iþ1

For speed measurements,

P3
cs2;2  cs2;4 p1ffiffi su sd
i¼0 ðyti  yti Þ
WMspe
1 ¼ ¼ n P
4
P o ð7Þ
maxfcs2;1 ; cs2;3 g max p1ffiffi 4 ysu p1ffiffi
4 sd
4 i¼1 t4iþ1 ; 4 i¼1 yt4iþ1
P P4 
3
ðcs2;2  cs2;4 Þ  ðcs2;1  cs2;3 Þ pffiffi4
1 su sd su sd
i¼0 ðyti  yti Þ  i¼1 ðyt4iþ1  yt4iþ1 Þ
WMspe
2 ¼ ¼ n P P4 sd o ð8Þ
maxfcs2;1 ; cs2;3 g max p1ffiffi4 4i¼1 ysu p1ffiffi
t4iþ1 ; 4 i¼1 yt4iþ1

It is worth noting that the relationship between Minnesota algorithm and wavelet-based test statistic can be extracted by
comparing Eqs. (5) and (6). The Minnesota algorithm (Stephanedes and Chassiakos, 1993) may be expressed as
P Pn1 
1 n1 ou
n i¼0 yti  i¼0 yod
ti
M1 ¼  P Pm od ð9Þ
max m1 m ou
i¼1 ytniþ1 ; m
1
i¼1 ytniþ1
P Pn1 od  1 Pm ou Pm od 
1 n1 ou
n i¼0 yti  i¼0 yti  m i¼1 ytniþ1  i¼1 ytniþ1
M2 ¼  P Pm od ð10Þ
max m1 m ou 1
i¼1 ytniþ1 ; m i¼1 ytniþ1

When n is equivalent to m and both are 4, Eqs. (5) and (6) are the same as the Minnesota algorithm, representing
WMocc occ
1 ¼ M1 and WM 2 ¼ M2. Thus, the Minnesota algorithm is a special case of our proposed algorithm. By applying the
wavelet multi-resolution analysis to traffic information, meaningful test statistic can be extracted for incident detection.
The next task is to select the best test statistic and develop a systematic method of varying threshold values depending on
the level of traffic volume.

3.2. Selection of best test statistic for incident detection

In the previous section, several test statistics (Eqs. (5)–(8) and finer coefficients) were extracted for incident detection by
using wavelet multi-resolution analysis. Given these test statistics, the major task is to select the one that is most capable of
clearly discriminating between normal and incident-disturbed traffic conditions. Divergence, which can be used as a class
separability measure with respect to the adopted feature, is popular among other feature selection techniques (Guyon
and Elisseeff, 2003; Theodoridis and Koutroumbas, 2006). Assuming that the density functions of feature vector xi for inci-
dent data and xj for incident-free data are Gaussians N(li, Ri) and N(lj, Rj), respectively, we can compute the divergence Jij(x)
as:
1 n o 1  
T
J ij ðxÞ ¼ trace R1 1 1 1
I Rj þ Rj Ri  2I þ ðli  lj Þ ðRi þ Rj Þ li  lj ð11Þ
2 2
where li, Ri, lj and Rj are means and covariances of xi and xj, and I is identity matrix.
For the one-dimensional case, Eq. (11) becomes:
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6 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

! !
1 r2j r2i 1 1 1
J ij ðxÞ ¼ þ  2 þ ðli  lj Þ2 þ ð12Þ
2 r2i r2j 2 r2i r2j
where li, lj and r2i , r2j are the means and variances of xi and xj, respectively.
In order to determine the best test statistic using divergence technique, seven simulation scenarios covering different lev-
els of traffic demand and incident severity conditions were implemented using VISSIM micro-simulation software (PTV Vi-
sion, 2007). The scenarios were divided according to traffic demand (low, medium, and high volume, labeled as LV, MV, and
HV respectively) and incident severity (low, medium, and high blockage, labeled as LB, MB, and HB). The characteristics of
the simulation scenarios are summarized in Fig. 2. As shown in Fig. 2, the blockage level is determined by the number of
lanes blocked; that is, LB, MB, and HB relates to one, two, or three lanes blocked, respectively. The blockage was performed
by making vehicles stop for 10 min at traffic a signal located halfway between the detector stations, which were 0.5 miles
(800 m) apart from each other. The simulated roadway facility consisted of a four-lane freeway. The traffic-demand levels LV,
MV, and HV correspond to flow rates of 3000, 5000, and 7000 veh/h/4lanes. Fig. 3 shows a snapshot of a simulation-run un-
der scenario HV–MB. Among the nine possible scenarios tabulated, two were excluded from the analysis: LV–LB and HV–HB.
The LV–LB, or low-demand and low-blockage condition is excluded because it has minimum adverse effect on the traffic and
is very challenging to detect. On the other end of the spectrum, the HV–HB, or high-demand and high-blockage condition is
also excluded because while it does have significant impact on traffic, it is very easy, if not trivial, to detect with a wide range
of methods.

HV-LB HV-MB HV-HB

High
Volume level

MV-LB MV-MB MV-HB

Medium

LV-LB LV-MB LV-HB

Low

1 lane 2 lane 3 lane

# of lanes blocked

(a) Diagram of simulation dataset

# of lanes
Simulation Traffic flow Number of Incident Incident -free
blocked
scenario (vehicles/hour) Incident runs interval Interval
(total lanes=4)
LV-MB 3000 2 30
LV-HB 3000 3 30
MV-LB 5000 1 30
MV-MB 5000 2 30 20 ~ 30 min. 1 ~ 20 min.
MV-HB 5000 3 30
HV-LB 7000 1 30
HV-MB 7000 2 30
(b) Detail condition of simulation
Fig. 2. Characteristics of simulation dataset.

Fig. 3. Simulated network: distance between stations is 800 m (0.5 mile). Incident is located halfway between the stations.
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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 7

Table 2 shows the several test statistics of occupancy and speed measurements that include the test statistics of California
and Minnesota algorithms. We chose occupancy and speed for the proposed algorithm because algorithms based on them
were found to be more efficient than those based only on one traffic parameter (Mak and Fan, 2005). It has been reported
that speed and occupancy data tend to reflect incident-induced lane-blockage in a timelier manner than flow data (Mak and
Fan, 2005).
Based on the divergence results summarized in Table 3, Feature 1 yields the highest divergence values and, hence, is the
best test statistic for both occupancy and speed measurements (see Fig. 4). Feature 1 provides an indication of the traffic
conditions in the freeway segment that lies between the two detectors because Feature 1 represents the cumulative spatial
difference between upstream and downstream traffic measurements (occupancy and speed). Therefore, higher Feature 1 can
be attributed to congestion created between the two detectors as a result of an incident or a bottleneck. Note that the effect
of incidents on traffic is more temporary and sharper frequency on traffic measurements than that of bottleneck. For the
cases of LV–MB and MV–LB, it is less clear which among the 16 is the best feature because they are not noticeably discrim-
inating between normal and incident-disturbed traffic cases. However, Feature 1 presents the best performance, in general,
among all candidate features.
Fig. 4 consists of a battery of histograms based on various scenarios for the comparison of the two best and the worst
occupancy-based features: Features 1, 2 and 6. Fig. 4 empirically shows that good features should have lower FAR under nor-
mal traffic conditions while larger DR under incident cases regardless of the level of traffic flow. The histograms on the left-side
relate to the incident-free condition whereas the ones on the right-side represent incident cases. When the observed test

Table 2
Several test statistics for incident detection.

Occupancy measurement Speed measurement

Feature 1 co2;2 co2;4 Feature 1 cs2;2 cs2;4
maxfco2;1 ;co2;2 g maxfcs2;1 ;cs2;2 g

Feature 2 ðco2;2 co2;4 Þðco2;1 co2;3 Þ Feature 2 ðcs2;2 cs2;4 Þðcs2;1 cs2;3 Þ
maxfco2;1 ;co2;2 g maxfcs2;1 ;cs2;2 g
o s
Feature 3 d2;1 Feature 3 d2;1
o s
Feature 4 d2;2 Feature 4 d2;2
o s
Feature 5 d2;3 Feature 5 d2;3
o s
Feature 6 d2;4 Feature 6 d2;4
o s
Feature 7 d1;1 Feature 7 d1;1
o s
Feature 8 d1;2 Feature 8 d1;2
o s
Feature 9 d1;3 Feature 9 d1;3
o s
Feature 10 d1;4 Feature 10 d1;4
o s
Feature 11 d1;5 Feature 11 d1;5
o s
Feature 12 d1;6 Feature 12 d1;6
o s
Feature 13 d1;7 Feature 13 d1;7
o s
Feature 14 d1;8 Feature 14 d1;8

Table 3
Divergence of candidate features.

F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 F13 F14

(a) Occupancy measurement
LV–MB 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3
LV–HB 58.8 10.6 0.1 19.6 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.1 2.1 5.2 0.1 0.3 0.7 1.5
MV–LB 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.1
MV–MB 134.4 24.3 5.5 19.2 0.1 0.3 0.2 1.5 3.5 5.5 0.2 0.3 0.5 0.7
MV–HB 786.5 150.9 69.0 67.1 0.1 0.2 14.6 15.4 16.0 15.9 0.2 0.3 0.5 0.7
HV–LB 36.2 6.3 1.8 3.2 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.5
HV–MB 350.7 57.5 29.6 33.5 0.1 0.2 7.8 8.4 9.7 10.8 0.2 0.4 0.9 1.1
Average 195.3 35.7 15.1 20.4 0.1 0.2 3.3 3.7 4.6 5.5 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.7

(b) Speed measurement

LV–MB 13.8 0.1 0.1 0.0 8.8 11.6 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 7.4 9.7 11.1 9.7
LV–HB 436.1 57.2 4.6 12.5 6.7 7.2 0.6 1.3 2.2 2.1 6.4 7.7 8.4 6.6
MV–LB 5.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
MV–MB 1269.1 183.5 21.3 38.7 0.3 0.2 2.6 4.0 6.5 8.5 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.3
MV–HB 6504.1 567.7 105.5 98.9 4.4 5.1 16.4 16.0 16.1 16.4 4.5 5.3 5.9 6.3
HV–LB 735.5 119.7 22.7 35.2 0.0 0.1 4.4 7.1 9.4 11.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1
HV–MB 6191.3 544.1 115.6 118.4 0.1 0.2 31.8 34.2 36.5 38.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
Average 2165.0 210.3 38.5 43.4 2.9 3.5 8.0 8.9 10.1 11.0 2.7 3.3 3.7 3.3
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8 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

Fig. 4. Histograms of Features 1, 2 and 6 using occupancy.

statistic value is greater than the threshold value (dotted vertical line), an ‘‘incident alarm” is sounded. The ideal feature/
threshold combination would place all incident-free observations to the left of the threshold line and all incident cases to
the right of it, thus yielding a 100% DR and 0% FAR. As shown in Fig. 4, when the threshold value is set to 0.2, Feature 1
(Fig. 4a) detects almost all incident cases while keeping its FAR low in comparison to those of Feature 2 (Fig. 4b). Therefore,
Feature 1 attains higher DR and low FAR compared to those of Feature 2. On the other hand, as suggested by the divergence
results, Feature 6 (Fig. 4c) shows little discrimination between normal and incident cases. Results from speed measurements
present a similar phenomenon. In addition, depending on the level of traffic flow in normal traffic conditions, variance
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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 9

Fig. 4 (continued)

changes slightly even if the mean is almost zero for all cases. As such fixed, or pre-determined, threshold values tend to yield
higher FAR values. More details on varying threshold values are presented in Section 3.3.
Based on these results, Feature 1 will be used as the decision functions, for both occupancy and speed measurements, as
shown in Eqs. (5) and (7).

3.3. Varying threshold values

In Section 3.2, two test statistics based on divergence criterion were selected for incident detection. It has been observed
repeatedly that shortly after the occurrence of an incident, occupancy tends to increase upstream and decrease downstream
while the opposite happens to speed. Therefore, two decision functions for incident detection are proposed as the following:
P3
p1ffiffi ou od
i¼0 ðyti  yti Þ
WMocc
1 ¼ n P 4
P4 od o > docc ð13Þ
max p1ffiffi4 4i¼1 you p1ffiffi
t4iþ1 ; 4 i¼1 yt4iþ1
P3
p1ffiffi su sd
i¼0 ðyti  yti Þ
WMspc
1 ¼
n 4
P4 su P4 sd o < dspe ð14Þ
max p1ffiffi y ; p1ffiffi y
4 i¼1 t4iþ1 4 i¼1 t4iþ1

In other words, an incident alarm is sounded only when the conditions in both Eqs. (13) and (14) are met. The most impor-
tant issue is how to select optimal threshold values docc and dspe. Even though there was a research (ITS DECISIONS, 2001) to
try to find out an optimal threshold values, little published study has reported a theoretical approach to the optimal selection
of such parameters. In order to derive the mathematical relationship between the false alarm probability and the threshold
values of proposed decision functions, firstly, we can mathematically express false alarm rate as follows:
spe
at ¼ PðWMocc
1 > docc ; WM 1 < dspe jnormal trafficÞ ð15Þ
where WMocc
1 and WMspe
1 are normal distributions Nðl0;occ ; r and Nðl0;spe ; r
2 2
respectively, and at is the target or desir-
0;occ Þ 0;spe Þ,
spe
able false alarm rate. Under incident-free traffic conditions, usually l0,occ = 0 and l0,spe = 0. Assuming that WMocc1 and WM 1
are independent, we obtain:
   
at ¼ P WMocc spe
1 > docc jnormal traffic  P WM 1 < dspe jnormal traffic




docc  l0;occ dspe  l0;spe
¼ 1U U ð16Þ
r0;occ r0;spe
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10 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

where U denotes the cumulative distribution function of a standard normal distribution. By assuming that each term con-
tributes equally to at in Eq. (16), we can obtain the following approximated equations:
pffiffiffiffiffi  
docc l0;occ
at  1  U r0;occ
pffiffiffiffiffi   ð17Þ
dspe l0;spe
at  U r0;spe

Because l0;occ ¼ 0 and l0;spe ¼ 0 under incident-free traffic conditions, the relationship between the false alarm probability
and the threshold values can be found using the following equations:

docc ¼ U1 pffiffiffiffi

ð1 at Þ  r0;occ
ð18Þ
pffiffiffiffi  r
dspe ¼ U1
at 0;spe

Fig. 5. Block diagram of the proposed incident algorithm.

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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 11

where U1 represents the inverse of the cumulative distribution function of a standard normal distribution. As we can see in
Eq. (18), for a given target false alarm rate (at), the threshold values will be changed adaptively depending on the traffic lev-
els of normal traffic, i.e., the standard deviations ðr0;occ ; r0;spe Þ of WMocc
1 and WMspe
1 under normal traffic conditions.
With all the building blocks in place, Fig. 5 illustrates the core procedure of the proposed incident algorithm.

4. Case study with simulated data

To evaluate the proposed wavelet-based AID algorithm, its performance is compared with that of California, Minnesota,
and several neural network models. In this section, seven simulated incident scenarios, as presented previously in Section 3.1
and Fig. 2, are used for that purpose. Further comparisons using real-world incident cases are presented in Section 5.
To obtain the optimal values of the varying threshold parameters, which change with the level of traffic volume, both the
means and the variances of the test statistics WMocc 1 and WMspe 1 under normal traffic must be known beforehand. This is
occ spe
accomplished by computing WM1 and WM 1 for different levels of normal traffic conditions. Fig. 6 shows the box plots
of test statistics for different traffic levels from very light traffic, about 250 veh/h/lane, to the left, to near-capacity traffic,
over 2000 veh/h/lane to the right. It is interesting to note in Figs. 6 and 7, that whereas the means of test statistics are prac-

Fig. 6. Box plot of the test statistics versus traffic volume rate.

Fig. 7. Standard deviation of the test statistics versus traffic volume rate.
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12 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

tically zero across all traffic levels, their standard deviation decreases as the traffic volume increases. This is evidence that
any type of comparative AID algorithm that is based on threshold parameters such as WMocc 1 and WMspe1 needs to vary the
parameters based on the traffic level in order to minimize false alarms and maximize detection rates.
Based on the experimental results, we can approximate the standard deviation curve over traffic flow rate with fourth-
degree polynomial functions as the following:

r^ 0;occ ¼ 0:0001x4v ol  0:0022x3v ol þ 0:0195x2v ol  0:0777xv ol þ 0:1798 ð19Þ

(
4 3 2
0:0018xv ol  0:0251xv ol þ 0:1282xv ol  0:2859xv ol þ 0:245 for xv ol  5
r^ spe ¼ ð20Þ
0:005 for xv ol > 5

where r ^ spe are the estimated standard deviations of WMocc

^ occ and r spe
1 and WM 1 in normal traffic, and xvol is the four-lane traf-
fic flow rate per hour divided by 1000. Fig. 8 shows the estimated curve of standard deviation over different traffic flow rates.
In Fig. 8, the small circle represents the actual standard deviation value at specific traffic volume rate. The estimated curve
can fit the standard deviation very well.
In order to evaluate the incident detection performance of the proposed algorithm, a total of 210 simulation ‘‘runs” or
cases, 30 for each of the 7 scenarios, were generated with different random-seeds. In each scenario, the runs were performed
using the multi-run feature of VISSIM, with the first run having random-seed equals to 1, and the last run having random-
seed equal to 30. The length period of each run was 60 min, with the incident (blockage) from starting at t = 20 min and end-
ing at t = 30 min. The 30 cases of each scenario were then randomly divided into two groups – 15 for training and the other
15 for testing purposes. As a result, a total of 105 (15  7) incident cases were available for training and the same amount
was available for testing. As for the incident-free cases, a run of 4 h was performed for each traffic demand level.
As commonly adopted in AID studies, the measures of effectiveness (MOE) used were the detection rate (DR), false alarm
rate (FAR), and mean time to detection (MTTD). DR is calculated as the ratio of the number of detected incidents to the total
number of incidents in the data set. FAR is defined as the ratio of the number of false alarms to the total number of appli-
cations of the algorithm, generally every 30 s, under incident-free conditions. MTTD is simply the average time from the
occurrence of an actual incident till the correct detection of the incident for all detected incidents. Obviously, it is desirable
for AID algorithms to yield high DR (near 100%), low FAR (near 0%), and short MTTD (as short as possible).
In an effort to evaluate the proposed wavelet-based AID algorithm, four algorithms were selected for comparison. These
include: California algorithm, Minnesota algorithm, wavelet-based radial basis function (WRBF) neural networks (Karim and
Adeli, 2002), wavelet-based multi-layer feed-forward neural networks (WMLF1 and WMLF2), and multi-layer feed-forward
neural networks (MLF1 and MLF2). California algorithm and Minnesota algorithm are well-established and widely-tested.
WMLF1, which relies on occupancy data alone, and WMLF2, which employees both occupancy and speed data, use wave-
let coefficients as neurons in the input layers of the neural network. This algorithm is based on the wavelet-filtering scheme
proposed by Ghosh-Dastidar and Adeli (2003). The architecture of WMLF algorithms consists of 6 neurons in the input layer
for WMLF1 and 12 neurons for WMLF2, a single hidden layer with 10 neurons, and one output neuron. Tangent sigmoid
function and linear transfer function are used for activation function in the hidden and output layers. WRBF, which employs
occupancy, speed, and flow data, also use wavelet coefficients as neurons in the input layers of RBF neural network.
The architecture of MLF algorithms is identical to WMFL algorithms, except for the input neurons. MLF1 uses occupancy
data only as eight input neurons (upstream and downstream occupancy: (t  3), (t  2), (t  1) and (t)), while MLF2 com-
bines both occupancy and speed data as 16 input neurons (upstream and downstream occupancy and speed: (t  3),
(t  2), (t  1) and (t)). In other words, MLF employs raw traffic data as input neurons instead of wavelet coefficients.

Fig. 8. Estimated standard deviation curve.

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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 13

Table 4
Performance comparison (simulation dataset).

dCal dCal dCal California algorithm dMinn dMinn Minnesota algorithm

1 2 3 1 2

DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
(a) Training dataset
1 0.45 0.07 70 1 307 0.15 0.17 85 1 209
1 0.39 0.05 75 3 247 0.04 0.21 90 3 191
1 0.35 0.05 81 5 228 0.09 0.01 98 5 121
1 0.31 0.09 88 7 216 0.08 0.01 100 7 114

a
Th. WRBF Th. WMFL1 Th. WMFL2
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
0.9 90 1 160 0.9 85 1 201 0.9 95 1 165
0.8 98 2 150 0.8 98 2 160 0.8 98 2 152
0.7 99 3 144 0.7 99 3 144 0.7 100 3 144
0.6 100 4 136 0.6 100 4 131 0.6 100 4 137
Th. MFL1 Th. MFL2 at Proposed algorithm
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
0.9 88 1 170 0.9 96 1 246 0.01 99 0.7 169
0.8 97 2 162 0.8 99 2 207 0.03 100 0.8 160
0.7 99 3 148 0.5 100 4 191 0.05 100 0.8 156
0.6 100 4 147 0.4 100 6 175 0.07 100 0.8 147

Algorithm Threshold value DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)

(b) Testing dataset
Proposed algorithm docc ¼ U1 pffiffiffi 99 1 150
ð1 at Þ  r0;occ
pffiffiffiffi  r
rspe U1
at 0;spe
California algorithm dCal Cal Cal 73 2 270
1 ¼ 1; d2 ¼ 0:45; d3 ¼ 0; 07
Minnesota algorithm dMinn
1 ¼ 0:15; dMinn
2 ¼ 0:17 80 1 223
WRBF Th. = 0.9 93 1 155
WMFL1 Th. = 0.9 92 1 161
WMFL2 Th. = 0.9 95 1 158
MFL1 Th. = 0.9 88 1 170
MFL2 Th. = 0.9 92 1 242
a
Th.: Threshold value.

Table 5
Detailed performance of the proposed algorithm.

at LV
docc dspe MB HB
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
0.01 U1 pffiffiffi  r0;occ 1
Up ffiffiffiffiat  r0;spe
93 2 234 100 2 164
ð1 at Þ
0.03 100 2 246 100 2 164
0.05 100 2 234 100 2 154
0.07 100 2 220 100 2 154

at MV
docc dspe LB MB HB
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
0.01 U1 pffiffiffi  r0;occ ffiffiffiffi
1
Up at  r0;spe
100 0 268 100 0 128 100 0 108
ð1 at Þ
0.03 100 0 236 100 0 128 100 1 108
0.05 100 1 226 100 0 128 100 1 108
0.07 100 1 190 100 0 120 100 1 108
at HV Average
docc dspe LB MB
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
0.01 U1 pffiffiffi ffiffiffiffi  r0;spe
1 100 0 108 100 0 176 99 0.7 169
ð1 at Þ  r0;occ Upat
0.03 100 0 158 100 0 84 100 0.8 160
0.05 100 0 156 100 0 84 100 0.8 156
0.07 100 0 156 100 0 84 100 0.8 147
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14 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

Table 4 presents the results of performance comparison of different incident detection algorithms for training and testing
data sets. In Table 4, dCal Cal Cal
1 , d2 , and d3 represent the threshold values in California algorithm and dMinn
1 ; dMinn
2 present the
threshold values in Minnesota algorithm. In addition, varying threshold values in the proposed algorithm were described
by docc and dspe. Table 4 shows the best performance each algorithm can achieve for a given level of FAR. For the purpose
of fair comparisons, we fixed the threshold values to those that yielded the best performance for the training dataset and
these threshold values were used to obtain the performance for testing data set. In Table 4, we emphasize the comparison
parts with bold fonts.
In this experiment, threshold values were selected to achieve a FAR of 1% for training performance. As shown in Table 4b,
the proposed AID algorithm clearly outperformed others with a 99% DR, 1% FAR, and 150 s. MTTD for the testing data set.
Within the WMLF family, WRBF showed good performance compared to other neutral networks, especially faster MTTD than
other algorithms. In addition, WMLF2 yielded a higher DR than WMLF1, arguably because WMLF2 employed more traffic
information than WMLF1 did.
To further explore the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, its performance under each simulated scenario is tabu-
lated in Table 5. It is evident, and not surprisingly, that higher traffic volume results in high DRs and low FARs irrespective
of the number of lanes blocked because any incident that occurs during high traffic volume causes obvious incident pattern
in the denoised traffic data. In this Table, we highlight the best average performance with 1% FAR.
Overall, the proposed wavelet-based AID algorithm consistently yielded the best DR, lowest FAR, and shortest MTTD. In
addition, of the four remaining algorithms, the WRBF algorithms yielded higher DR and fast MTTB than those from other
neutral network algorithms. This is indicative of the effectiveness of wavelet-based algorithms in filtering out traffic data
noises for incident detection purposes. At this point, the proposed algorithm seems very promising and is ready to be tested
with real-world incident cases.

5. Case study with real-world data: development of a new incident database

5.1. Real-world dataset description

One of the major challenges of AID research has been the scarcity of incident field data. Therefore, even some very recent
studies have been based solely on simulations (Crabtree and Stamatiadis, 2007; Cheu et al., 2002). The main reason for this is
the difficulty in obtaining accurate incident information that is precise and complete enough for AID research purposes; ba-
sic information such as incident start time and location are often not precisely, and occasionally erroneously, reported on
incident record systems such as those maintained by freeway patrols and incident management programs. The inaccuracy
and imprecision of such reports is often inherent to the data collection process; for instance, the recorded start time of an
incident usually comes from the perception of those involved in the incident, or merely from a rough estimate or guess from
the officer filing the crash report. Even in the fortuitous case of someone actually observing a crash scene as it unfolded be-
fore him, the time he read from his watch and later reported very likely may not be in sync with the real-time traffic data
being collected at a traffic management center (TMC) elsewhere. This difference between the unsynchronized watch of a for-
tuitous witness and the computer clock at TMC, may it be a couple of minutes or even more, would embed an undesirable
time shift in the incident data.
This problem has kept researchers from computing, and, hence, optimizing the MTTD of their respective AID algorithms
correctly (Teng et al., 1999). Besides, it is known that a portion of incidents is never reported, according to Roess et al. (2004).
It is estimated that approximately only 50% of all traffic incidents are recorded on any type of incident log. This casts a sha-
dow on some so-called normal traffic data as they might not be really incident-free and are, therefore, unsuitable for algo-
rithm training purposes.
In light of these data quality challenges and the importance of evaluating and validating AID algorithms, some efforts
have been made towards the creation of incident data sets that are accurate enough for research purposes. These include
Browne et al. (2005), Mak and Fan (2006b), and Roy and Abdulhai (2003). For instance, a relatively well-known database
containing information of traffic and incident on a section of interstate I-880 was developed to investigate the effectiveness
of the Freeway Patrol Service (FPS) program in California (Petty et al., 1996; Skabardonis et al., 1997). A similar incident data
collection work was performed on freeway I-10 in Los Angeles area (Skabardonis et al., 1999). Since its creation, the I-880
incident database has been used in several studies including those of Jin et al. (2002), Yuan and Cheu (2003), and Srinivasan
et al. (2005).
As a part of the effort presented in this paper, we decided to create and use a new incident dataset, instead of using any
existing incident database, for two main reasons. First, the Freeway Performance Measurement System (PeMS) (http://
www.pems.eecs.berkeley.edu) has made their 30-s loop detector data available to the public. The richness of spatio–
temporal traffic information provided by PeMS, along with the incident record of the California Highway Patrol, also
available though PeMS, has made it possible to construct a database that contains accurate incident information for the pur-
poses of this study. Second, the new incident dataset resultant from our research adds to the resource of the field of AID
study.
For this study, the northbound facility of Interstate 880, or I-880N, was selected as the ‘‘test bed” because this section of
freeway was studied before and was deemed to have one of the highest crash frequencies in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cal-
ifornia (Skabardonis et al., 1997). In addition, as incident research on I-880 was developed in the 1990s, the creation of a new
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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 15

dataset on the same interstate could foster comparative studies related to safety, e.g. incident frequency, by comparing
safety information from the database developed in the past and the one developed herein. For this research, 30-s and 5-
min lane-by-lane loop detector data were collected for all of the 79 vehicle detector stations (VDS) along I-880N from
Sep/01/2006 to Nov/15/2006.
The researchers studied the California Highway Patrol (CHP) incident log and scrutinized the corresponding PeMS traffic
data for the VDS pair just upstream and downstream of each incident site. The start time of an incident was defined to be one
interval before the traffic disturbance started, an approach similar to those implemented by Mak and Fan (2006a). This was
done by a thorough visual inspection of the 30-s time series of flow and occupancy data for both up and downstream VDS
sites.

5.2. Evaluation results

A total of 40 real-world incident data sets were collected along I-880N for the training and testing of the AID algorithms.
In order to provide an idea of the severity of the collected incidents, Fig. 9 shows the histogram of the number o lanes
blocked according to the CHP reports. It is important to note that number of lanes blocked equal to zero means that the

Lane Blockage - CHP reports

14

12

10
Number of incidents

0
0 1 2 3 4
Number of lanes blocked
Fig. 9. Histogram of reported number of lanes blocked by the incident. I-880 is for the most part a 4-lane freeway.

Incident Duration - CHP reports

200
180

160

140
Duration (minutes)

120

100
80

60

40

20

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Incident #
Fig. 10. Reported duration of the incidents (min).
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Table 6
Training and testing performance of real-life dataset.

(a) Training dataset subset dCal dCal dCal California algorithm dMinn dMinn Minnesota algorithm*
1 2 3 1 2

DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
1 1 0.83 0.05 50 0 166 0.33 0.85 77 0 98
1 0.65 0.05 87 1 130 0.38 0.59 90 1 92
1 0.59 0.05 93 2 120 0.25 0.49 97 2 88
2 1 0.61 0.31 63 0 153 0.22 0.82 73 0 95
1 0.43 0.21 90 1 123 0.22 0.57 90 1 93
1 0.43 0.15 97 2 120 0.22 0.34 97 2 90
3 1 0.83 0.05 53 0 113 0.33 0.85 67 0 86
1 0.63 0.17 87 1 125 0.31 0.56 87 1 92
1 0.55 0.15 93 2 119 0.41 0.40 97 2 94
4 1 0.83 0.05 60 0 188 0.33 0.85 73 0 102
1 0.69 0.21 83 1 154 0.22 0.56 90 1 102
1 0.59 0.11 93 2 119 0.22 0.41 97 2 95

Subset Th. MFL1 Th. MFL2

DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
1 0.09 63 1 241 0.09 50 1 196
0.08 90 2 236 0.08 80 2 207
0.07 97 3 203 0.07 97 3 196
2 0.09 57 1 213 0.09 73 1 268
0.08 93 2 208 0.08 93 2 240
0.07 97 3 181 0.07 97 3 174
3 0.09 57 1 254 0.09 70 1 224
0.08 67 2 204 0.08 83 2 212
0.07 93 3 184 0.07 93 3 194
4 0.09 87 1 236 0.09 73 1 268
0.08 93 2 210 0.08 90 2 222
0.07 97 3 182 0.07 93 3 156
Subset Th. WMFL1 Th. WMFL2
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
1 0.09 63 1 297 0.09 67 1 261
0.08 93 2 161 0.08 93 2 111
0.07 97 3 143 0.07 97 3 106
2 0.09 90 1 178 0.09 77 1 150
0.08 93 2 145 0.08 93 2 113
0.07 97 3 137 0.07 97 3 96
3 0.09 67 1 188 0.09 70 1 211
0.08 87 2 173 0.08 93 2 174
0.07 93 3 155 0.07 97 3 125
4 0.09 77 1 193 0.09 83 1 188
0.08 90 2 157 0.08 93 2 152
0.07 97 3 138 0.07 97 3 137

Subset Th. WRBF at docc dspe Proposed algorithm

DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s) DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
1 0.09 70 1 137 0.01 U1pffiffiffi  r0;occ U1 pffiffiffi  r0;spe 97 1 73
1 at 1 at
0.08 93 2 98 0.03 97 2 66
2 0.09 87 1 91 0.01 97 0 88
0.08 93 2 87 0.03 100 1 80
3 0.09 70 1 110 0.01 93 1 77
0.08 93 2 107 0.03 97 2 65
4 0.09 87 1 109 0.01 97 1 88
0.08 93 2 98 0.03 97 2 76

(b) Testing dataset subset dCal dCal dCal California algorithm

1 2 3

DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)

1 1 0.65 0.05 90 1 165
2 1 0.43 0.21 90 8 113
3 1 0.63 0.17 90 0 193
4 1 0.69 0.21 50 0 132
Average 80 2 150
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Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19 17

Table 6 (continued)

Subset dMinn dMinn Minnesota algorithm

1 2
DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
1 0.38 0.59 80 0 150
2 0.22 0.57 80 4 109
3 0.31 0.56 100 1 144
4 0.22 0.56 90 2 100
Average 88 2 125

Subset Thresholds DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)

MFL1
1 0.9 100 1 205
2 0.9 80 3 234
3 0.9 90 2 270
4 0.9 80 2 206
Average 88 2 228

MFL2
1 0.9 100 1 263
2 0.9 80 3 200
3 0.9 90 2 225
4 0.9 70 2 173
Average 85 2 215

WMFL1
1 0.9 100 1 195
2 0.9 90 3 108
3 0.9 90 2 156
4 0.9 100 2 236
Average 95 2 173

WMFL2
1 0.9 90 1 243
2 0.9 90 2 172
3 0.9 100 2 210
4 0.9 90 2 128
Average 93 2 188

WRBF
1 0.9 100 2 162
2 0.9 90 2 72
3 0.9 90 1 123
4 0.9 100 2 81
Average 95 2 110

Subset docc dspe Proposed algorithm

DR (%) FAR (%) MTTD (s)
1 U1pffiffiffi  r0;occ U1pffiffiffi  r0;spe 100 1 102
1 at 1 at
2 90 3 67
3 100 0 99
4 90 0 65
Average 95 1 83

report only mentions that the vehicles involved were on the right shoulder or on the center divider. Therefore, the incident
might have blocked the traffic before the arrival of the CHP officers. Fig. 10 provides a plot of the reported duration of the
incidents. The missing points on that plot mean that no information regarding the incident duration was reported.
Because of the limited number of incident cases, a fourfold cross-validation (CV) procedure was implemented for the
comparison of testing performance of different algorithms. In other words, a total of 40 incident cases were divided into four
subsets where each subset consists of 10 incident cases. For each experiment, three of the subsets were used for training and
the remaining one was used for testing. All incident cases in the dataset were eventually used for both training and testing
purposes.
Table 6 tabulates the training and testing performance of five AID algorithms for average and for each fold of the fourfold
CV. For easy comparisons, we highlight the average performances of each algorithm with bold fonts. Once again, it is evident
that the proposed algorithm, showing high DR, low FAR, and fast MTTD, outperformed all the others. For instance, the pro-
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18 Y.-S. Jeong et al. / Transportation Research Part C 19 (2011) 1–19

posed algorithm presents on an average 95% DR, 1% FAR, and 83 s. MTTD, which is the best performance among the five AID
algorithms. Particularly noteworthy is in the MTTD department where the proposed algorithm is the fastest to correctly de-
tect the incidents. Similar to the results when simulated incident scenarios were used, WREF algorithm yielded higher DR
and faster MTTD than other neural networks family. Also, WMFL algorithms showed good performance in comparison to
those of MFL algorithms.
Overall, the proposed algorithm yielded high DR, low FAR, and fast MTTD in comparison with other well established or
neural-net based algorithms for both simulated and real-world scenarios. It is clear that the proposed algorithm is a superior
alternative for freeway incident detection applications.

6. Conclusions

This paper proposed a novel wavelet-based freeway automated incident detection algorithm, which utilizes both occu-
pancy and speed data. In addition, this research recognized the importance of developed varying threshold values as a func-
tion of traffic flow rate. The algorithm was implemented and tested with simulated and real-world incident data sets, which
were newly created via VISSIM simulation and data collection on I-880N.
Results of the comparative evaluation effort indicates that overall, wavelet-based algorithm with adaptive thresholding
parameters yielded better performance, in most of cases, with higher DR, lower FAR, and faster MTTD. Particularly, since the
threshold values can be adaptively changed depending on the traffic levels, the proposed algorithm could achieve high DR
while keeping its FAR low. As further study, we will integrate spatio–temporal data to further enhance the proposed algo-
rithm. Also, an extension of this research may employ varying weights for each observation of traffic data so that more recent
observations would feature more prominently in the incident detection algorithm.

Acknowledgment

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant Number CMMI-0644830 as well as by
the Federal Highway Administration’s Dwight D. Eisenhower Graduate Transportation Fellowship.

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