2023–24 Projects:
You've probably used applications that inform you of current traffic conditions and help you find the fastest way to reach your destination taking into account the traffic. However you may not have thought as much about traffic coordination on a larger scale, such as the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MDOT) has to deal with. MDOT collects a huge amount of data every year, including traffic flow volume at thousands of locations, precise turn data at hundreds of traffic lights, details on what types of vehicles are on the roads in what numbers (there are 13 classifications), road conditions and construction sites, and lots more.
This data is used in part to predict and mitigate the affect of construction projects on traffic, and to choose which projects to allocate limited resources to in the first place. Clearly there is no way for a person to evaluate and assess this data simply by looking at it, so this is a perfect problem for computer scientists to tackle!
The goal of this project will be to help the MDOT engineers analyze the affects of construction projects, both in the short and long term.
The first step will be to create a simple simulation that can use the above data to determine various performance measures of the current road system on handling traffic, such as throughput, average speed of an individual, slowest speed of an individual, etc. Then you can use this simulation to estimate the affect of any changes to the road system on the performance measures. You may or may not choose to create a very simple graphical representation for your simulation.
Next you will extend your simulation into an application that inputs user-specified modifications of the road system, and outputs reasonable predictions of the effects those modifications would have. The minimum modifications your app should handle to be considered a successful project include
Further extensions of the project could include optimizing all traffic light timing, providing ideal detour routes to use during construction projects, and suggesting the best projects to undertake given a cost/benefit analysis.
All of MDOT's data is free and available for anyone to use!
It would be very helpful to have taken Algorithms, and best if at least a few students have experience in data mining or data bases.