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Analytical and Computer Modelling of Transportation Systems for Traffic Bottleneck Resolution: A Hajj Case Study

  • Research Article - Computer Engineering and Computer Science
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Abstract

The rate of advancements in the fields of integrated electronic sensor technology, wireless communications, and efficient software algorithms has enabled us to witness a wide outreach of such technologies in an expanding variety of consumer and industrial applications. Essentially, the integration of such advanced communication systems and efficient computational modelling techniques is used to construct effective transportation systems (TSs) for optimising people/vehicle movement in congested areas. An approach for incorporating efficient TSs in a major candidate application domain is described in this paper for the case of the Hajj pilgrimage traffic scenario, which has a profound impact on several million pilgrims each year. This paper reviews technologies previously considered for Hajj and presents a mathematical model to provide an evaluation of the proposed TS deployment at saturated road intersection points between Holy sites. Significantly, the developed model can be used to obtain fast and accurate performance estimates and provide a guide of how to optimise traffic management policies taken. Analytical results of the proposed transportation model had demonstrated that frequent bottleneck scenarios can be efficiently managed resulting with improved journey times, congestion levels, throughput, and an overall enhancement to the transport-infrastructure capacity utilisation under the constraints of Hajj. The accuracy of this model and its practical use was demonstrated with the simulation results of the computer model. Once validated, the model was used to evaluate the impact of the proposed approach as compared to the existing transportation approach.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, College of Computer Science and Engineering, Taibah University, PO BOX 344, Al-Madinah Al Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia

    Omar Tayan & Abdullah M. Al BinAli

  2. Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Engineering, Taibah University, PO BOX 344, Al-Madinah Al Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia

    Muhammad N. Kabir

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  1. Omar Tayan
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  2. Abdullah M. Al BinAli
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  3. Muhammad N. Kabir
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Correspondence to Omar Tayan.

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Tayan, O., Al BinAli, A.M. & Kabir, M.N. Analytical and Computer Modelling of Transportation Systems for Traffic Bottleneck Resolution: A Hajj Case Study. Arab J Sci Eng 39, 7013–7037 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-014-1231-3

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