Chaos Theory in Urban Traffic Flow: Is Crowd Sensed Data Driving the Macro-traffic Behavior to Oscillation or Equilibrium

Stability theory tells us that a dynamic system will eventually converge to its stable state, in which the system's overall energy is at its minimum. On the other hand, chaos theory states that small perturbations of the system are able to drive itself from previously-stable state to another state. This phenomenon has been observed in many fields like cosmetol- ogy, physics, biology and chemistry. Our research question is whether chaos theory also applies to the transportation domain. Specifically, when we are given imperfect or delayed crowd- sensed data, will we observe the cyclic/oscillatory transition between different traffic states? This paper aims at investigating this chaotic phenomenon (oscillatory traffic behavior in this paper) on urban transportation with imperfect or delayed crowd-sensed information and delivering recommendations for crowdsensing-based traffic applications to avoid the undesirable oscillations.