Cloud Computing for Agent-Based Urban Transportation Systems

Agent-based traffic management systems can use the autonomy, mobility, and adaptability of mobile agents to deal with dynamic traffic environments. Cloud computing can help such systems cope with the large amounts of storage and computing resources required to effectively use of traffic strategy agents and mass transport data. This article reviews the history of the development of traffic control and management systems within the evolving computing paradigm and shows the state of traffic control and management systems based on mobile multiagent technology. An intelligent transportation cloud could provide services such as decision support, a standard development environment for traffic management strategy, and so on. Moreover, the cloud can generate, store, manage, test, optimize, and use mobile traffic strategy agents to maximize advantages of cloud computing and agent technology to effectively control and manage urban-traffic systems. © 2011 IEEE.