Online IFN Transport

qrIFNTransport

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Online IFN-Transport is an extension and an application of Ideal Flow Network (IFN) theory for traffic assignment and transportation networks synthesis and analysis. The open source Python version of IFN-Transport is available in GitHub . Check the video on YouTube on how the IFN-Transport works. The paper by Teknomo, K. (2017) Ideal Relative Flow Distribution on Directed Network, Proceeding of the 12th Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies (EASTS), Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam Sept 18-21, 2017 was explaining about IFN Transport. The paper is downloadable from J-Stage.

OpenStreetMap Data Processor

Go to OSM web page to get the bounding box of your place of interest.
Zoom the map close enough (zoom level 15-19) such that the max data to be downloaded is less than 1 MB. Change the road type to be only major roads to accomodate (zoom level 13-14).
Then copy and paste the bounding box coordinates.

When you click "Download OSM Data" to download the data, it would convert, impute and clean the data and put into link matrix and node matrix in Network Data Tab.

Road Type










Bounding Box



Data Imputation Settings



Node matrix

Each row in the input Node Matrix consists of the following data:

NodeID,X-Coordinate, Y-Coordinate;



You can do coordinate transformation to rotate 90 clockwise or counter clockwise, flip vertical or horizontal for better drawing of the network.
Undo is only for one last transformation. Do Undo every time to go back to the original data, before you do the next transformation

Link matrix

Each row in the input Link Matrix consists of the following data:

LinkID, startNodeID, endNodeID, linkCapacity, linkDistance (km), linkMaxSpeed (km/h);



   

End each row by a semicolon. Separate each data in one row by comma or a space.

  • Link ID is useful number for your own identification.
    Each link is one directional traffic stream.
    If the road is two ways, in macroscopic level, you need to create two links, one for each direction.
    In microscopic level, each turning direction is one link such that there is no ambiguity of the directional traffic stream
    (see examples of Microscopic T or + Intersections).
  • Start Node ID is the beginning node identification number of the link
  • End Node ID is the ending node identification number of the link
  • Link capacity is either given based on standard (such as HCM) in pcu/hour/link/direction,
    or approximated based on road width (in meter/link/direction)
    or number of lanes per link per direction (See: Setting tab)
  • link distance is the road length per link, in km.
  • link max speed (to be precise: free flow speed) is in km/hour.

Make sure your link data produces a strongly connected network. You can test it using button above.

IFN requires the network to be strongly connected. If it happens that your network is weakly connected, can either clean your network by having only the largest strongly connected network , or you can create a cloud node and connect each of the source node (or source component) in the network into the cloud node through dummy links and connect the cloud node to each of the sink node (or sink component) in the network using dummy links.

In most practical purposes, you want to exclude the links related to the cloud nodes from the computation of network performances. For theoretical purposes, the inclusion of links related to the cloud node would guarantee that the ideal flow matrix is premagic.


Traffic Assignment Model

Set the Traffic Assignment model

IFN Constraint

Set a constraint to the model

Input: total flow, $ \kappa $

Input: max flow, $ \psi $

Input: maximum congestion level, $ \xi $

Input: origin-destination flow using the following format:

Node1, Node2, ODFlow;

The origin-destination flow would be converted to real world flow below using one of the following traffic assignment methods

Input: real world flow using the following format:

Node1, Node2, ActualFlow;

In any model, we need to have invariant, something that we assume to be constant.
Using IFN, you could calibrate the results based on one of the following assumptions.

Input: origin-destination flow using the following format:

Node1, Node2, ODFlow;

Travel Time Model

Set Travel Time Model:

Using Greenshield’s traffic model, we assume the speed-density relationship is linear and the congestion level $ g $ (which is equal to the flow/capacity) is set to be between zero and one. Since the congestion level is normalized to be between zero and one, it is easier to interpret the meaning of congestion level. Congestion is just flow/capacity and capacity is the maximum flow. The Greenshield tends to have higher speed than BPR (for the same congestion level) and only operates when the traffic is not so congested (i.e., uncongested region of the fundamental diagram of traffic flow model).

BPR model $ t=t_{0}\left ( 1+\gamma g^{\eta } \right ) $ has two parameters, $\gamma$ and $\eta$, while the internal parameter $t_{0}$ depends on link maximum speed and link distance, which is already inside the network link matrix data. Greenshield model $ t=\frac{2l}{u_{f} \left ( 1+ \sqrt{1-g} \right )} $ and Modified Greenshield model $ t=\frac{2l}{u_{f} \left ( 1\pm \sqrt{\left| 1-g \right|} \right )} $ has no external parameter because the internal parameters are link maximum speed and link distance, which is already inside the network link matrix data. The $\pm$ in Modified Greenshield model depends on $ sign \left( 1-g \right ) $. BPR model and Modified Greenshield produces better variation of speed and travel time even when the traffic is congested. However, the congestion level (which is equal to the flow/capacity) can go beyond 1, which make the definition of capacity somewhat confusing because "practical capacity" is no longer the maximum flow. For Modified Greenshield, the max congestion must be less than 2.0. There is no limit of congestion value if you use BPR model. Transportation engineers is often using BPR model in conjunction with the practical capacity derived from Highway Capacity Manual (HCM).

Capacity

Set the values in link capacity to represent
Optional input: set capacity multiplier

You can set the link capacity is either given based on standard in passenger car unit per hour (pcu/hour). Alternatively, it is sometimes easier to approximate the link capacity based on road width (in meter) or number of lanes per link per direction.

Capacity multiplier is used when the link capacity unit is not in pcu/hour. The capacity multiplier would change as you change the meaning of link capacity. You can change the default value of capacity multiplier.

Capacity to Stochastic Model

The flow in IFN is proportional to the capacity ratio.
You can select to use either simple proportional model without any parameter $ s_{ij} = \frac{c_{ij}}{\sum_{k=1}^{n} c_{ik}} $ or use power-exponential model with two parameters $ s_{ij} = \frac{c_{ij}^\alpha e^{\beta c_{ij}}}{\sum_{k=1}^{n} c_{ik}^\alpha e^{\beta c_{ik}}} $.


Run the Scenario

If you upload or change your data or your model, you need to press Calculate button to recalculate.


Output:

Display Network

Press button below to redraw, especially after uploading or transforming your data.
You can also zoom in or zoom out through mouse wheel and pan the drawing by dragging the network.