Assessment of a Framework for Intelligent Decision Support System for Traffic Congestion Management System

Over the last few decades the dimensions of the transportation system and the interaction between
these dimensions and the socioeconomic system, have increased by many folds. Traffic congestion
problem is one of the major problems that face many transportation decision makers for urban areas.
The problem has many impacts on social, economical and development aspects of urban areas.
Hence the solution to this problem is not straight forward. It requires a lot of effort, expertise, time and
cost that sometime are not available. Most of the existing transportation planning software, specially
the most advanced ones, requires personnel with lots practical transportation planning experience
and with high level of education and training. In this paper we propose a comprehensive framework
for an Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) for Traffic Congestion Management System that
utilizes a state of the art transportation network equilibrium modeling and providing an easy to use
GIS-based interaction environment. The developed IDSS reduces the dependability on the expertise
and level of education of the transportation planners, transportation engineers, or any transportation
decision makers. The development of a prototype, derived from the framework described in this paper
is under way. The result of the experimentation with the prototype, in terms of its usability, degree of
ease and its effectiveness in providing optimum solutions/scenarios to transportation and decision
makers will be reported in upcoming papers.