A Random Forest Incident Detection Algorithm that Incorporates Contexts

A major problem faced by state of the art incident detection algorithms is their high false alert rates, which are caused in part by failing to differentiate incidents from contexts. Contexts are referred to as external factors that could be expected to influence traffic conditions, such as sporting events, public holidays and weather conditions. This paper presents RoadCast Incident Detection (RCID), an algorithm that aims to make this differentiation by gaining a better understanding of conditions that could be expected during contexts' disruption. RCID was found to outperform RAID in terms of detection rate and false alert rate, and had a 25% lower false alert rate when incorporating contextual data. This improvement suggests that if RCID were to be implemented in a Traffic Management Centre, operators would be distracted by far fewer false alerts from contexts than is currently the case with state of the art algorithms, and so could detect incidents more effectively.