Modular model building for vehicular traffic systems with macroscopic dynamics

Vehicular traffic modeling, analysis and supervision has became in the last year very attractive both for engineers and mathematicians with the aim of understanding, controlling and forecasting traffic phenomena. In this framework, the use of simulation tools has spread rapidly both to adequately perform the design of a road infrastructure, and as a support to simulate and verify the road infrastructure. Currently available simulators are in general closed systems where designers have no access to the implemented models, do not permit the integration of macroscopic and microscopic models together and are usually separated from design and verification tools. This paper presents a preliminary study on how to fill these gaps by using a modular model building approach. The developed elementary traffic models have been implemented into Matlab/Simulink environment and collected into a sort of library. The approach has been tested and validated using a real scenario and the available traffic measurements.