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AKSOE: Arbeitskreis Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

AKSOE 16: Traffic Dynamics, Urban, and Regional Systems

AKSOE 16.3: Talk

Friday, March 30, 2007, 10:30–11:00, H8

Modelling traffic flow with Fokker-Planck equations — •Friedrich Lenz and Holger Kantz — Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Strasse 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany

Traffic flow gives rise to interesting phenomena and problems, e.g. jams and synchronized flow. We take data measured in Germany on the ring of motorways around Cologne for a macroscopic modelling approach. A Fokker-Planck equation in two dimensions with coefficients which depend on the time of day is used to model the dynamics at every gauging station. We estimate the time-dependent drift- and the diffusion coefficients from the measured data. In order to assess the quality of this model we integrate a corresponding Langevin equation and compare the histogram in phase space of the model data with the original data. The model allows us to obtain information about dynamical properties of the transition from synchronized flow to free flow and vice versa.