This paper presents a critical analysis of the deficiencies that the classical qualitative reasoning paradigms present in the problem of describing the qualitative behaviour of urban traffic. From this analysis it is concluded that these deficiencies can be solved by applying to the problem a qualitative formalism with ability to deal with temporal reasoning and qualitative representation of multidimensional parameters, developed by the authors during their work in the EQUATOR ESPRIT-II project. A qualitative model of the Urban Traffic Behaviour is built, then the suitability of the formalism to represent this model is shown, and finally a whole architecture for a Qualitative Reasoning Environment to be used in Urban Traffic Control applications, including a Graphical-based Development Interface for scenario design and an Event Abstractor for detecting patterns of problematic situations at different levels of spatial and temporal granularity, is shown. This architecture has been built and tested during the EQUATOR ESPRIT-II project and the results are discussed. (A)
Samenvatting