Cognition-based hierarchical en route planning for multi-agent traffic simulation

The goal of this study is to model drivers’ cognition-based en route planning behaviors in a large-scale road network via the Extended Belief-Desire-Intention (E-BDI) framework. E-BDI is a probabilistic behavior modeling framework based on agents’ own preferences of multiple attributes (e.g., travel time and its variance) and daily driving experiences. However, it is challenging to use the E-BDI framework for the demonstration of drivers’ en route planning behavior in a large-scale road network due to its high computational demand. To handle the computation issue, a hierarchical en route planning approach is proposed in this study. The proposed E-BDI-based en route planning approach consists of three major procedures: (1) network partitioning, (2) network aggregation, and (3) E-BDI-based en route planning. The Java-based E-BDI module integrated with DynusT^® traffic simulation software is developed to demonstrate the proposed en route planning approach in Phoenix, Arizona road network involving 11,546 nodes and 24,866 links. The demonstration results reveal that the proposed approach is computationally efficient and effective in representing various en route planning behaviors of drivers in a large-scale road network.