DEVELOPMENT OF A FUZZY EXPERT SYSTEM TO PRIORITIZE TRAFFIC CALMING PROJECTS

Nowadays, due to the constraints of budget and time, the prioritization of traffic calming projects before installation of traffic calming measures is vital for transportation engineers and urban planners. The purpose of this study is to develop an expert system for prioritizing streets that are affected by problems associated with traffic safety using Fuzzy Logic. Expert systems have been used widely and globally for facilitating decision-making processes in various fields of engineering. Due to the uncertainty and vagueness in traffic and transportation related problems, the use of fuzzy logic in the inference engines and decision-making processes of expert systems, is effective. In the proposed expert system, effective parameters in prioritizing traffic calming projects in residential streets including traffic volume, residential density, differential speed and number of accidents are investigated. The Fuzzy Logic toolbox, which is embedded in MATLAB (R2010b), is employed to design and simulate this expert system on the basis of Fuzzy Logic. A specific GUI was developed for this purpose. By developing this system, engineers and decision-makers will be able to rank projects according to their importance. This expert system was tested through prioritizing a number of residential streets in the city of Tehran. The output of the tests showed that the proposed system is helpful in prioritizing different traffic calming projects. Finally, the evaluation of the system was conducted. According to the assessment, most evaluators acknowledged the efficiency and effectiveness of the system.