Article ID: | iaor1995659 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 28B |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 235 |
End Page Number: | 250 |
Publication Date: | Jun 1994 |
Journal: | Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological |
Authors: | Hall Fred L., Acha-Daza Jorg A. |
Keywords: | catastrophe theory |
This paper describes the results of the application of catastrophe theory to real traffic flow data. Using information from the Queen Elizabeth Way Freeway Traffic Management System, near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, it shows that catastrophe theory can be effectively applied to traffic flow. Following previous work done by Navin and Hall and others, this paper demonstrates how a transformation of variables and axes, including translation and rotation of the axes, is able to provide a good fit for a catastrophe theory model to traffic data. The paper also describes the criteria for the selection of the position of a new origin and the determination of the angle for rotating the axes.