• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.105-118
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• 2001

Incident detection rate and false alarm rate are the key measures tot estimating the performance of automatic incident detection algorithms. It is, however inherently very difficult to improve the two measures simultaneously. The main purpose of this study is to present some methods for solving the problem. For this, an incident detection algorithm has been designed in this study. The algorithm is consisted of two functions, one for detecting incident and another for detecting congestion. A logic for distinguishing non-recurrent congestion from recurrent congestion was employed in the algorithm. The new algorithm basically requires speed, flow, and occupancy data for defining incident situation, but the algorithm is able to perform this task without one of the three parameters. The performance of the algorithm has been evaluated by using the field data collected from Interstate Highway 880 in Bay Area, California. The empirical analysis results are very promising and thus, the algorithm proposed may be very useful for the analysts. This paper presents some empirical test results for the performance of California incident detection algorithm, only for the reference purpose.