Traffic incident message dissemination for reducing traffic congestion

Advanced information and communication technologies can facilitate traffic incident management. If an incident is detected and blocks a road link, in order to reduce the incident-induced traffic congestion, the incident information should be announced to the travelers who drive to the blocked link. This work focuses on the design of an incident message dissemination strategy by selectively delivering incident information to those potentially affected drivers in a traffic network. Time-dependent shortest path algorithms are used to generate a subnetwork whose vehicles should receive such information. To evaluate the performance of the proposed strategy, a simulation approach based on a detailed cell transmission model is used. The results can be used in advanced traveler information systems to improve the state of the art in preventing urban road traffic congestion caused by incidents.