EAGER: Interactive Reconstruction and Visualization of Metropolitan-Scale Traffic

交通拥堵是一个全球性的挑战。除了明显的能源和环境影响外，交通拥堵还给社会带来了切实的成本。在当前的经济和环境气候下，传统的以物理为中心的缓解战略本身不太可能成功或可持续。通过在交通基础设施和车辆中整合传感、信息和通信技术，已经提出了许多构建智能交通系统（ITS）的策略。在这个EAGER提案中，我们提出了一个早期概念探索，以研究ITS的创新和变革方法。我们设想，这项探索性研究可以通过为交通管理引入紧密集成的实时交通模拟、估计和可视化来推进下一代交通运输系统。我们正在开发新的混合方法，用于实时流量估计，流量重建和可视化，以及设计GPU和多核心算法来加速整体性能。如果成功，这项研究可以通过算法透镜实现车辆引导和导航辅助的自适应路线规划，以缓解交通拥堵。提议的统一框架还具有为各种应用提供计算进步的潜力，包括调节交通、改善城市规划、交通系统设计、虚拟旅游、教育、娱乐、监视和应急响应。整套教学和推广活动通过综合教育研究计划和研究成果的有效传播来补充和扩展研究的影响。

Traffic congestion is a global challenge. Besides the obvious energy and environmental impacts, traffic congestion imposes tangible costs on society. It is unlikely that traditional physically-centered mitigation strategies by themselves will be successful or sustainable in the current economical and environmental climate. Numerous strategies have been proposed to construct Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), by incorporating sensing, information, and communication technologies in transportation infrastructure and vehicles. In this EAGER proposal, we present an early-concept exploration to investigate an innovative and transformative approach for ITS. We envision that this exploratory research could advance the next generation of ITSs by introducing a tightly-integrated real-time traffic simulation, estimation, and visualization for traffic management. We are developing novel hybrid methods for real-time flow estimation, traffic reconstruction and visualization, as well as designing GPU and many-core algorithms to accelerate the overall performance.If successful, this research could enable adaptive route planning for vehicle guidance and navigational aid to alleviate traffic congestion through an algorithmic lens. The proposed unified framework also has the potential to provide computational advances for diverse applications, including regulating traffic, improved urban planning, transportation system design, virtual tourism, education, entertainment, surveillance, and emergency response. The set of pedagogical and outreach activities complement and extend the research impact through integrated education-research programs and effective dissemination of research results.