Visual Analytic for Traffic Impact Assessment

Abstract

This study strives to promote the state of traffic impact assessment through high-end visual analytics by incorporating spatial and temporal data visualization to enhance traffic management. Based on a dataset on traffic flow at three major intersections, we married data cleaning, integration, and transformation to set out for a detailed visual analysis. Thus, the critical materials comprise the traffic count in multiple lanes, vehicle types, and saturation flow rates to understand the road network's capacity. They essentially explored the traffic volume variations daily and hourly and pattern identification using heat maps, parallel coordinate charts, and bar plots. Thus, the findings expose the remarkable traffic volume and pattern differences by distinguishing peak and off-peak hours on weekdays and weekends. The level of service at each junction was determined by the volume-to-capacity ratio, identifying potential congested areas. As such, this work points to the importance of further improvements to visual analytic techniques to accurately predict traffic patterns and evaluate traffic management strategies effectively. Predictive models based on visual analytic findings can pave the way for proactive traffic control and congestion mitigation, making urban traffic management more efficient and safer. The current study provides a scaffold for additional exploration of the above-detailed methods and their penal outcomes in urban development planning and policy provision in terms of developing sustainable traffic control strategies and real-time decision-making improvements.