Incident-Aware Distributed Signal Systems in Self-Organised Traffic Control Systems

Traffic congestion is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and causes air pollution which poses various health risks. In response to such challenges, traffic management systems are becoming increasingly intelligent and adaptive. Particularly self-organised approaches such as the Organic Traffic Control (OTC) system offer additional advantages such as efficiency, scalability, and robustness. In addition to the local and traffic-dependent switching of traffic signals, a central task of such a system is the coordinated adaptation of traffic lights by means of Progressive Signal Systems. In this paper, we present a novel approach for establishing decentralised PSSs that takes into account recognised incidents and thus proactively ensures optimised traffic flows. We develop three different strategies and evaluate them using realistic simulations.