Eur. Phys. J. B (2015) 88: 257
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60384-x

Regular Article

Characterization of vehicle behavior with information theory

¹ LaCCAN/CPMAT, Instituto de Computação, Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL), BR 104 Norte km 97, 57072-970 Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil
² Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL), BR 104 Norte km 97, 57072-970 Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil
³ Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), C1106ACD, Av. Eduardo Madero 399, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

^a e-mail: alla.lins@gmail.com

Received: 14 May 2015
Received in final form: 12 July 2015
Published online: 12 October 2015

Abstract

This work proposes the use of Information Theory for the characterization of vehicles behavior through their velocities. Three public data sets were used: (i) Mobile Century data set collected on Highway I-880, near Union City, California; (ii) Borlänge GPS data set collected in the Swedish city of Borlänge; and (iii) Beijing taxicabs data set collected in Beijing, China, where each vehicle speed is stored as a time series. The Bandt-Pompe methodology combined with the Complexity-Entropy plane were used to identify different regimes and behaviors. The global velocity is compatible with a correlated noise with f^{− k} Power Spectrum with k ≥ 0. With this we identify traffic behaviors as, for instance, random velocities (k ≃ 0) when there is congestion, and more correlated velocities (k ≃ 3) in the presence of free traffic flow.