Dynamic multiple-graph spatial-temporal synchronous aggregation framework for traffic prediction in intelligent transportation systems

PeerJ Comput Sci. 2024 Feb 29:10:e1913. doi: 10.7717/peerj-cs.1913. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Accurate traffic prediction contributes significantly to the success of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), which enables ITS to rationally deploy road resources and enhance the utilization efficiency of road networks. Improvements in prediction performance are evident by utilizing synchronized rather than stepwise components to model spatial-temporal correlations. Some existing studies have designed graph structures containing spatial and temporal attributes to achieve spatial-temporal synchronous learning. However, two challenges remain due to the intricate dynamics: (a) Accounting for the impact of external factors in spatial-temporal synchronous modeling. (b) Multiple perspectives in constructing spatial-temporal synchronous graphs. To address the mentioned limitations, a novel model named dynamic multiple-graph spatial-temporal synchronous aggregation framework (DMSTSAF) for traffic prediction is proposed. Specifically, DMSTSAF utilizes a feature augmentation module (FAM) to adaptively incorporate traffic data with external factors and generate fused features as inputs to subsequent modules. Moreover, DMSTSAF introduces diverse spatial and temporal graphs according to different spatial-temporal relationships. Based on this, two types of spatial-temporal synchronous graphs and the corresponding synchronous aggregation modules are designed to simultaneously extract hidden features from various aspects. Extensive experiments constructed on four real-world datasets indicate that our model improves by 3.68-8.54% compared to the state-of-the-art baseline.

Keywords: External factors; Graph neural network; Multiple-graph; Spatial-temporal synchronous; Traffic prediction.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61771265), the Funding for the 6th “333 Talent” Project in Jiangsu Province (No. 2022044), the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (No. KYCX22_3341, KYCX23_3396). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.