Parameter Selection Procedure for Signalized Arterial Simulation Calibration

In the last few decades, traffic simulation has become an important tool for transportation engi-neers. The ability to simulate a proposed project and evaluate its potential benefits and costs al-lows for optimization of many project’s details and can improve project implementation. These benefits accrue, however, only if simulation of the study area reflects reality at least reasonably accurately. This requires that traffic simulation models be properly calibrated and accurately represent important details of the study area. Microscopic calibration of these models is currently an active research area, especially regarding signalized arterial networks. This paper presents a procedure that may be used to select certain parameters that may be used as a basis for micro-scopic calibration of an arterial network model. The proposed iterative procedure consists of four phases: initial parameter selection, measures of effectiveness selection, Monte Carlo experiment, and sensitivity analysis and parameter elimination. The goal of the procedure is to experimentally determine which parameters have an effect on the selected measures of effectiveness. This methodology was applied to a model of Cobb Parkway in Atlanta, GA and the number of relevant calibration parameters, internal to VISSIM, was reduced from twenty-two to nine.