Big-data-generated traffic flow prediction using deep learning and dempster-shafer theory

This work addresses short-term traffic flow prediction by proposing a big-data-based framework. The proposed framework uses data fusion to deal with heterogeneous data generated from various sources. The data are categorized into two types: streams of data and event-based data. In this work, Deep Belief Networks (DBNs) are used to independently predict traffic flow using streams of data, i.e., historical traffic flow and weather data, and event-based data, i.e., tweets. Furthermore, Dempster's conditional rule for updating belief is used to fuse evidence coming from streams of data and event-based data modules to achieve enhanced prediction. The experimental results using real-world data show the merit of the proposed framework compared to the state-of-the-art ones.