Real-time traffic incident detection based on a hybrid deep learning model

Small sample sizes and imbalanced datasets have been two difficulties in previous traffic incident detection-related studies. Moreover, real-time characteristics of incident detection models must be improved to satisfy the needs of traffic management. In this study, a hybrid model is proposed to address the above problems. In the proposed model, a generative adversarial network (GAN) is used to expand the sample size and balance datasets, and a temporal and spatially stacked autoencoder (TSSAE) is used to extract temporal and spatial correlations of traffic flow and detect incidents. Using a real-world dataset, the model is evaluated from different aspects. The results show that the proposed model, considering both temporal and spatial variables, outperforms some benchmark models. The model can both increase the incident sample size and balance the dataset. Furthermore, the sample selection method improves the real-time capacity of the detection.