Hierarchical Optimal Control of Urban Traffic Networks

This paper deals with the problem of optimally controlling traffic flows in urban transportation traffic networks. For this, a nonlinear discrete-time model of urban traffic network is first suggested in order to handle the phenomenon of traffic flows such as oversaturatedness and/or undersaturatedness. Then an optimal control problem is formulated and a hierarchical optimization technique is applied, which is based upon a prediction-type two-level method of Hirvonen and Hakkala.