A Comparative Study of Ensemble Models for Predicting Road Traffic Congestion

Increased road traffic congestion is due to different factors, such as population and economic growth, in different cities globally. On the other hand, many households afford personal vehicles, contributing to the high volume of cars. The primary purpose of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of ensemble methods using road traffic congestion data. Ensemble methods are capable of enhancing the performance of weak classifiers. The comparative analysis was conducted using a real-world dataset and bagging, boosting, stacking and random forest ensemble models to compare the predictive performance of the methods. The ensemble prediction models are developed to predict road traffic congestion. The models are evaluated using the following performance metrics: accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and the misclassification cost viewed as a penalty for errors incurred during the classification process. The combination of AdaBoost with decision trees exhibited the best performance in terms of all performance metrics. Additionally, the results showed that the variables that included travel time, traffic volume, and average speed helped predict vehicle traffic flow on the roads. Thus, the model was developed to benefit transport planners, researchers, and transport stakeholders to allocate resources accordingly. Furthermore, adopting this model would benefit commuters and businesses in tandem with other interventions proffered by the transport authorities.