An Exploratory Study of Two Efficient Approaches for the Sensitivity Analysis of Computationally Expensive Traffic Simulation Models

One of the main challenges arising when calibrating a complex traffic simulation model concerns the selection of the most important input parameters. The quasi-OTEE and the Kriging-based SA are two recently developed efficient approaches for the Sensitivity Analysis (SA) of computationally expensive simulation models. In this paper, two experimental studies using two different traffic simulation models (i.e., Aimsun and VISSIM) are presented to compare these two methods, and better understand their advantages and disadvantages. Results show that both methods are able to identify, to a good degree, the important parameters. In particular, the quasi-OTEE is better in screening the parameters, while the Kriging-based approach has a higher precision in ranking the parameters. These findings suggest the following rule-of-thumb for the SA of computationally expensive traffic simulation models: the quasi-OTEE SA can be used first to screen the parameters, and decide which parameters to discard. Then, the Kriging-based SA can be used to refine the analysis and calculate first order indices to identify the correct rank of the important parameters.

GE Qiao;  CIUFFO Biagio;  MENENDEZ Monica; 

2014-07-01

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

JRC89192

1524-9050,   

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6805624,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC89192,   

10.1109/TITS.2014.2311161,