Work

Telling fortunes? Evaluation of traffic forecasting models using traffic and context features

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The need for efficient and reliable logistics solutions has increased significantly in the last decade. Traffic forecasts are a promising source of information that can be used to improve the planning of delivery schedules. However, most existing traffic forecasting approaches only support a forecasting horizon of up to an hour, which is insufficient for per-day-based schedule planning. In this paper, we focus on short-term traffic forecasting for up to four hours. We first propose a data collection process integrating traffic speed, incidents, weather, and holiday information. We have used this process to collect real-world traffic data for 115 days. We then define and evaluate twelve models for vehicle traffic forecasting, including well-known time series forecasting approaches and state-of-the-art deep learning models. Our results show that the best model in our comparison improved the accuracy by approximately 30% compared to a naive forecaster that repeats the last known value. The evaluation also shows that LSTM-based approaches are competitive to state-of-the-art models. Overall, the proposed deep-learning-based models perform best while requiring a smaller input timeframe than statistical models.

Source: Applied Intelligence

DOI: 10.1007/s10489-025-06565-4

Authors: Marius Hadry, André Bauer, Robert Leppich, Veronika Lesch, Samuel Kounev

Institutions: University of Würzburg, Illinois Institute of Technology, Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University

Language: English

Topic: Traffic Prediction and Management Techniques

Subfield: Building and Construction

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,190