Pergamon

Transpn. Res:C. Vol. 3, No. 4. pp. 247 260. 1995

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A REVIEW OF NEURAL NETWORKS APPLIED TO
TRANSPORT
MARK DOUGHERTY
The Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. Leeds LS2 9JT. U.K.
(Received 20 Much 1995)
Abstract - This paper attempts to summarise the findings of a large number of research papers
concerning the application of neural networks to transportation. A brief introduction to neural
networks is included, for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with the techniques. Because the subject
is so young, some of the papers appear only in conference proceedings or other less formal pub-
lications I make no apology for this; I felt it was important to cover as much of the contemporary
work as was possible.
The paper surveys both the application areas found to be fruitful and the range of neural
network paradigms which have been used. Not surprisingly, multilayer feedforward networks such
as backpropagation have so far been by far the most popular, but there are signs of a growing
diversity; practitioners using neural networks are urged to seek out the less well known paradigms
and experiment with them themselves.
A particular weakness noted in much of the work is the informal approach taken to detailed
analysis of the results of the research. It is postulated that a more rigorous approach to matters
such as comparison with other techniques and also the methodology used to design the neural
networks would help a clearer picture to emerge as to best practice and future research directions.
INTRODUCTION
The field of transport studies has seen an explosion of interest in neural networks in the
1990s. This is evident when one considers that over 40 papers published since 1990 are
reviewed in this paper. Only a handful can be found from the previous decade. This can
been seen as part of a general pattern of increased use of artificial intelligence techniques
in transport (Kirby and Parker, 1994).
Review articles on the subject have been published previously (Faghri and Hua, 1992a;
Hua and Faghri, 1994), but both of these papers concentrate more on future potential and
possibilities rather than previous work. The aim of this paper is therefore to make a
critical review of the work carried out thus far. What are the main classes of problem
within transport which have been tackled using neural networks? What kinds of neural
network have been used? What are the main achievements to date? What mistakes have
been made, and how could they have been avoided? What are the obstacles to further
progress and how might they be overcome? Finally, I think it is significant that those
working in the field of neural networks applied to transport still usually find it necessary
to announce this fact in the titles of their papers. Is using neural networks really that
different from other methods of analysis?
INTRODUCTION TO NEURAL NETWORKS
Neural networks is a broad term covering a great many different architectures, or
paradigms. The operation of these paradigms can vary enormously. However, all neural
networks share some basic common features. They are composed of a number of very
simple processing elements, known as neurons. These elements take data in from a number
of sources and compute an output dependent in some way on the values of the inputs,
using an internal transfer function. The neurons are joined together by weighted
241
248 Mark Dougherty
Fig. 1, A neuron (processing element).
connections; data flows along these connections and is scaled during transmission
according to the values of the weights (Fig. 1).
In general terms the relationship between the inputs X0 . . . X, of neuron j and its output
Y, is given by equations (1) and (2). The function is typically a non-linear function such
as a sigmoid.
Ij=c Wj;Xi (summarion)
i =O
yj =.f(lj 1
(transfer)
(2)
The output of a particular neuron may therefore contribute to the input received by
another. Naturally such a system is of little use unless it communicates with the outside
world and so some connections take data in from an external source, whilst others
pass data back out. The neural networks functionality is very much bound up in the
values of the connection weights, which can be updated over time, causing the neural
network to adapt and possibly learn. Partly because this idea is so abstract, those
working with neural networks have tended to impose a more rigid structure in practice.
Several simplifications are made:
l The neurons are arranged neatly in layers, with the existence or not of a connection
between two neurons being governed by a strict rule. For example, a common
scheme is for the output of each neuron in one layer to be fully connected to the
inputs of all neurons in another. This arrangement is typical of a feedforward network
(Fig. 2).
Input layer
T T T T T T
Fig. 2. A typical feedforward neural network
Review of neural networks 249
A learning rule is defined which determines how and when connection weights are
updated.
Connection weights have minimum and maximum strengths.
All the neurons within a layer, or often the entire network behave in the same way;
that is, they all use the same formula to compute an output from the weighted inputs.
Many networks have a further simplification in that they are feedforward networks
with no circular information paths; data flows in steps from the input side to the
output side. By contrast, recirculation networks do have such circular paths. In this
case it is usually assumed that all neurons compute their results simultaneously; these
results then map onto a new neural network state, and the process can be repeated.
Neural networks can be categorised according to the type of learning rule employed.
Three main learning schemes have been devised: supervised, reinforcement and self-
organising. A fourth category of neural network can be defined as those networks which
use more than one type of learning; these are often described as hybrid networks.
Supervised learning
In supervised learning, an input is presented to one side of a feedforward network, and
an output computed. This is compared with the output desired for these inputs, and a
global error function computed. This is then used to update the weights in order to move
the output towards the desired output. Over the course of many examples being presented
to the neural network, it is hoped that the global error will gradually decline, as the net-
work converges into a steady state. The learning is described as supervised, because the
network is given an exact description of the behaviour required after each iteration.
Perceptrons (continuous data) and the ADALINE (binary data) are early examples of
this type of network. Whilst it was shown that they could solve certain types of problem,
they cannot converge to a solution for a problem which is not linearly separable (Minsky
and Papert, 1969). The well-known backpropagation learning method solves this problem
for perceptrons by updating each internal weight in proportion to a partial derivative of
the error surface (Hecht-Nielsen, 1989). Similarly, the MADALINE network, which is
able to solve linearly separable problems, was developed from the ADALINE.
The majority of transport applications of neural networks have used backpropagation
networks; the reader should therefore assume that backpropagation (or similar) has been
used for a particular piece of work unless otherwise stated.
Reinforcement learning
A less direct way of training a network is to simply inform it whether it performed well
or badly for each iteration. If the neural network performed well, processing elements
within the network which are outputting an active signal are examined, and the strength
of the most active input connections to these neurons is increased. Often this is done on a
winner takes all basis, with only the connection providing the strongest input being
updated. Thus strong, active paths through the neural network are reinforced. Conversely,
if the neural network performed badly the strength of some connections are weakened.
Reinforcement learning is often known as Kohonen learning.
Examples of paradigms which use this approach are Learning Vector Quantisation
(Kohonen et a/., 1988) which is a feedforward network and Hopfield networks (Hopfield,
1982) which are recirculation networks. A generalisation of the Hopfield network is the
Boltzmann machine, which introduces the added sophistication of simulated annealing.
Self-organising networks
This type of paradigm operates purely on input data, with all the criteria for updating
the weights being determined internally within the neural network. The main use of such
networks is for classification problems where it is not certain beforehand what the defi-
nition of the classes should be. Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) networks are an
example of this type of network (Grossberg, 1976). An ART network contains a novel
250 Mark Dougherty
feature detector: if the network is exposed to a pattern it has not seen before it defines it
as belonging to a new class. Further similar examples are then grouped within that class.
Self-organising feature maps work differently, in that they perform an adaptive dimen-
sionality reduction of input data from many dimensions to just two (Kohonen, 1988).
Spatial grouping within this two-dimensional space can indicate separate classes of input.
Combined networks
Finally, some networks may use different learning methods for the connections between
different layers. Radial basis functions are an example of this general approach: here a
backpropagation type output layer sits above an initial network of radially symmetric
kernel units (Leonard et al., 1992). Counterpropagation has a Grossberg reinforcement
learning output layer above a self-organising feature map.
The reader is recommended to refer to textbooks on neural networks for comprehensive
treatment of these and other paradigms (Hecht-Nielsen, 1990; Beale and Jackson, 1990).
THE TARGET SUBJECT AREAS
Before examining any work in detail, it is interesting to gain a broad overview of the
kind of subject areas within transport which have received attention from those working
with neural networks. Table 1 gives an initial breakdown by subject area of the papers
reviewed in this article. Obviously the categories are purely arbitrary; some could
reasonably be merged, whilst others cover what is arguably a very broad area and could
be sub-divided. However, it is hoped that the reader gets a good idea of the kind of topics
being addressed.
A point to notice is that the vast majority of these papers concern road-based transport.
Whilst it is probably true that the majority of research projects have been directed
towards this mode, the table is not truly representative. For example, only a few papers
covering the maritime and avionics industries appear. One reason for this is that a lot of
the most interesting work has been kept secret, for both commercial and military reasons.
Also bear in mind that some subjects (such as autonomous underwater vehicles) are highly
specialised, and the reader is therefore left to search out further references if interested.
What follows is a brief discussion of the papers covering each subject area:
Driver behaviour
Work in this area splits neatly into two schools: modelling of either strategic or
instinctive decisions. The first school is typified by papers by Yang et al. (1992) and
Dougherty and Joint (1992), who both describe using neural networks to analyze data
collected from interactive route choice simulators. Volunteer drivers who took part in
these experiments were asked to make route choices based on the values of a wide variety
Table I
Subject area Number of papers
Driver behaviour/autonomous vehicles 12
Parameter estimation 7
Pavement maintenance 6
Vehicle detection/classification 5
Traffic pattern analysis 5
Freight operations 4
Traffic forecasting 4
Transport policy and economics 2
Air transport 2
Maritime transport 2
Submarine vehicles I
Metro operations I
Traffic control I
Total 52
Review of neural networks 251
of criteria. A neural network was then trained using these data to make similar decisions.
The network was then asked to make predictions of route choice for data items it had not
seen previously; good replication rates with regard to the actual decisions made were
reported in both papers. A neural network proved a quicker and more accurate method of
analysis than alternative techniques such as logit models.
Perhaps what is particularly interesting is the contrast between these two papers as to
the method used to establish the importance of a particular criterion. Yang et al. analyzed
the variation of the replication rate after changing the information given to the drivers,
contending that changes in replication rate are indicative of how important a particular
factor is: if drivers are not given sufficient information their decisions will become less
rational. Dougherty and Joint took a completely different approach, performing elasticity
tests on the trained networks, in order to get an idea of the relative importance of each
criterion.
The second school is typified by work aimed at trying to build real-time models capable
of steering a car around a road environment. Lyons and Hunt (1992) describe an initial
experiment, using data collected on an interactive computer simulation model, which
attempted to model overtaking manoeuvres. This work was later extended and the
problem reparameterised to enable real data to be used (Hunt and Lyons, 1993; Lyons,
1994). Learning vector quantisation networks were used in this later work; the winner
takes all approach appears well suited to modelling this type of decision making.
Another classical modelling problem which has been attacked using neural networks is
gap acceptance (Pant and Balakrishman, 1994). A self-organising neural network has
been built which can reverse articulated trucks: this is a particularly interesting problem
because human drivers often cannot solve it themselves. Because of this, a self-organising
approach was absolutely essential. Neural networks (ART) have also been demonstrated
for control of the lateral position of a vehicle using objects in the drivers view such as
white lines (Kornhauser, 1991). Again, a data set from drivers operating a simulation was
used in this work and with the cost of virtual reality technology falling rapidly, this seems
a likely area of enormous future interest.
Other researchers have taken this idea much further, designing systems which can be
used to equip a real vehicle. Work using neural networks processing data from an array of
distance detectors has been reported (Neusser et al., 1991), although this system was only
trained to deal with simplistic environments. Much greater flexibility has been achieved in
projects such as NAVLAB (Crisman and Webb, 1991). In this type of work we can clearly
see the two facets of instinctive and strategic decision making being unified to produce a
truly autonomous vehicle capable of interacting with a normal road environment
(Pomerleau et al., 1991).
Purameter estimation
This area of interest falls into a class of problem where measurable quantities such
as traffic flows are used to estimate parameters which, although of great use to traffic
engineers, are not easily measured on street without resorting to expensive manual surveys.
Origin-destination (OD) matrices are a typical data resource which engineers have need
of. Work has been published by many groups attempting to make estimates of such
matrices from flow data. Neural networks have been used in this context, typically on a
very small network, or even a single intersection (Kikuchi et al., 1993; Yang et al., 1992;
Chin et al., 1994). Whilst this work is interesting, it must be remembered that traffic
engineers often require OD matrices covering several hundred points. Two problems are
likely to occur if an attempt is made to scale this work up. Firstly, the computation time
of the neural network methods described will rise with the square of the number of points.
Secondly, the number of training examples required to train the networks will become
very large as a result, and collecting real data on this scale would become infeasible.
The inverse of OD matrix estimation involves estimating traffic flows from a basis of
an known (or estimated) OD matrix: the classic traffic assignment problem. A typical
scenario is that a traffic scheme is suggested which involves a major change to the road
252 Mark Dougherty
network. First an OD matrix is estimated, and then the traffic reassigned to a new
imaginary network which mirrors the existing network with the proposed changes super-
imposed. Work has been reported which used a hybrid genetic algorithm/neural network
to solve the assignment problem (Xiong and Schneider, 1992). In fact the main com-
ponent of this system was a cumulative genetic algorithm, which was used to search out a
minimum on the trip cost surface; a neural network was used as the cost function to be
minimised. Two main benefits of this method are claimed. The method was faster than a
conventional equilibrium model (although the use of a genetic algorithm is probably the
most significant factor affecting speed of operation). Much more directly related to the use
of neural networks is that several cost criteria could be incorporated very conveniently.
Travel time estimates are another important requirement of traffic engineers. Neural
networks are likely to be much more effective for this type of problem. This is because,
unlike OD estimation, good results can be achieved using data collected on only the link
of interest (Hua and Faghri, 1994). Even better results might be obtainable using data
from neighbouring links (Nelson and Palacharla, 1993). This latter work used counter-
propagation networks functioning as an adaptive look-up table; unfortunately the authors
do not show whether this method really generalised, as the amount of data used was very
small. Estimates have also been made of total link occupancies in an urban context using
neural networks; this information could possibly be of use in adaptive traffic control
systems (Dougherty et al., 1993). Finally, a system capable of estimating the maximum
capacity of a link from patterns of density and speed observed on the link has been
reported (Heymans et al., 1991).
Pavement maintenance
A system providing advice on the best options for maintaining a road surface can be
split into two sub-systems: a diagnostic element and a prognostic element. Both have
received attention from the neural network community.
The diagnostic element has been successfully attacked as a problem of image processing
(Kaseko and Ritchie, 1992, 1993). In this work neural networks are used to process
pictures of road surfaces and categorise features within them into different types of defect.
Note that considerable amounts of classical image processing were still necessary before
the neural network stage was reached, emphasising the point that neural networks do not
usually provide a complete solution to a problem. Another aspect of pavement diagnosis
is that of automatically recognising road markings which have been damaged or obscured
(Hua and Faghri, 1993). Here a Hopfield net was used as an associative memory to map
incomplete images onto templates. Again we see the idea of neural networks being used as
sub-systems; what makes this work unusual is that two different architectures of neural
network are used for the different sub-tasks of image association and recognition.
Those exploring the idea of prognostic systems for pavement maintenance suffer a
particularly difficult problem with regard to transferability. This is because the action
required for the treatment of a road surface is not just dependent on its condition, but
many other factors such as the level and type of traffic it is intended to bear and more
importantly, how much money there is to spend! Collecting sufficient data to cover all
these eventualities is extremely difficult. Work has been described which side-steps this
problem altogether by only considering data from a small geographical area and with
treatments suggested by a panel of experts from only two (related) organisations (Pant et
al., 1993). This gave good results within this rather limited domain, but the network could
not be applied elsewhere without retraining; this would involve another lengthy data
collection exercise.
An alternative approach is to only order the examples into several priority bands, with
no exact suggestion of what particular treatment is needed (Hajek and Hurdal, 1993). This
is more general, but a preprocessing stage, tailored to the local situation, is needed. The
idea of linking several neural networks appears in respect to this topic as well (Rewinski,
1992), but this paper does not describe its data sources or provide statistically significant
results, so it must be regarded as very preliminary in nature.
Review of neural networks 253
Vehicle detectionlclas$ication
Following on from the idea of a highway equipped with arrays of sensors, much work
has been undertaken to extract the maximum amount of information from the signals
generated. A typical derived quantity is the class of passing vehicles: a factor of its
wheelbase, number of axles, weight etc. Basis function networks have been applied to this
problem with some success (Mead et al., 1994); although the numerical results were not
outstanding, a commercial unit using an algorithmic approach performed even worse!
Clearly, more extensive testing, perhaps using devices supplied by other manufacturers, is
needed to gain a fuller picture.
A more ambitious idea is to dispense with traditional vehicle detection technology and
employ video cameras coupled with high- performance image processing techniques. Two
pieces of work using neural networks which complement each other very nicely have been
reported in this area. The first concerns detection of vehicles as they pass across a video
camera (Bullock et al., 1992, 1993). It is reported that although performance is similar to
conventional image processing techniques under ideal conditions, neural networks are
more flexible with regard to changes in external factors such as shadowing and camera
position. The second piece of work shows how, once detected, vehicles can be classified
into one of several types, again using a neural network (Belgaroui and Blosseville, 1993).
The idea of a system containing several neural networks, each performing a sub-task
springs to mind. Neural networks have also been used for the problem of automatic
license plate reading (Margarita, 1990); once again this work could easily be combined
with a detection system.
Trafic pattern analysis
Traffic networks equipped with arrays of inductive loops, or other equivalent sensors,
are rich sources of data concerning parameters such as the speed and volume of passing
vehicles. Such data sets, particularly if collected from several distinct geographical sites,
are extremely complicated to analyze because of the causal relationships in both space and
time which drive the behaviour of traffic systems. Several groups have therefore been
involved in work which has the general aim of using neural networks to discover patterns
within this data, and there is a wide spread of applications within this area.
Neural networks have been demonstrated as an aid to congestion diagnosis (Kirby et
al., 1993) by training a neural network to classify an urban traffic network into one of
two states: congested or non-congested. The main limitation of this work is the above-
mentioned difficulty of transferability, as the network was trained using a highly specific
data set defined by a local expert. The paper does, however, give an interesting demon-
stration of the use of neural networks to fuse several different congestion measures
together, to produce a higher level diagnosis. A similar approach is taken in later work
(Hua and Faghri, 1993a,b), but the number of congestion categories is extended; this
work used adaptive resonance theory and therefore demonstrates that alternative
paradigms to backpropagation are certainly worth considering.
This same group has also used adaptive resonance theory to explore the possibility of
using neural networks to analyze the seasonal variation of traffic flows (Faghri and Hua,
1992b). This is of importance to traffic engineers making surveys of traffic, so that results
can be reduced to a common baseline. Unfortunately the variation varies with the
characteristics of the section of road being examined, and the main problem is therefore to
try and classify a section into one of several types before a correction is applied. Naturally
this must be done using only a small amount of data in the temporal domain; if con-
tinuous data over a number of years were available a correction factor could be easily
determined. A neural network was successfully used to carry out this task.
Finally, we come to the task of identifying non-recurrent congestion caused by an
incident occurring on the carriageway, such as an accident. Successful work on this
subject has been carried out on motorway data (Ritchie et al., 1992), which compares
favourably with other more traditional incident detection algorithms in use (Ritchie and
Cheu, 1993). The main difficulty in this area is not the detection rate, which is excellent for
254 Mark Dougherty
most of the techniques, but the false alarm rate. This must be exceedingly low if operators
are to take actual notice of alarms raised in control centres. It is reported that it is in this
area where neural networks score highly, particularly if a persistence factor is set (the
neural network must report an incident for two or more consecutive time-slices before
an alarm is raised). Another difficulty is finding enough real data containing confirmed
incidents to test the system with; for this reason work reported so far has used simulated
data sets.
Freight operations
The main problem in freight operations for which attempts have been made to use
neural networks concerns optimisation of routing networks and scheduling. The main
problem all the researchers seem to have experienced is parameterisation of the problem.
This is because the problem is so highly non-linear. One possible solution to this is to use
self-organising categorisation networks (Matsuyuma, 1991; Jwell et al., 1991). Different
optimisation schemes are then used, depending on the class. Another approach is to
explore different encoding schemes, with the hope that one can be found which extracts
the salient features (Potuin and Shen, 1991). Yet another approach has been to use
Boltzmann machines as, unlike other paradigms, this type of network is specifically
designed for optimisation problems (Ohba et al., 1989). Unfortunately results were some-
what disappointing and is seems that the techniques involving complex pre-processing
show more promise.
Trajic forecasting
The forecasting of traffic falls into two distinct categories. Strategic forecasting is where
an attempt is made to predict traffic flows months or years into the future, and usually
influences major decisions on road planning. In contrast, short-term forecasts often have
a horizon of only a few minutes, and can conceivably feed directly into traffic control
systems. Neural networks have been used in both strategic (Chin et al., 1992) and short-
term (Dougherty et al., 1994; Dougherty and Cobbett, 1994; Clark et al., 1993) forecasts.
Promising results are reported in both cases. The latter paper has a particularly interesting
theme in that it makes a considerable effort to compare the neural networks against
ARIMA time-series modelling. Several different goodness-of-fit measures are used, and it
becomes apparent that the best technique depends on how you care to measure the
result! The question of comparative studies is discussed at greater length later.
Transport policy and economics
A traffic related problem in economics is modelling the effect of noise from air traffic on
the prices of houses adjacent to an airport (Collins and Evans, 1994). This work is an
excellent example of how neural networks may have uses in areas of transport studies
previously thought of as unlikely application areas. A neural network was used in this
work as a tool for multivariate analysis. Inputs consisted of a large number of possible
factors affecting the sale price of a house: condition, size, age etc. and of course a noise
factor reflecting the nuisance from aeroplanes landing at the local airport. The elasticity of
the neural network was used [in a similar fashion to Dougherty and Joint (1992)] to
measure the importance of a particular parameter: in this case the noise factor. A par-
ticular point of interest about this work is that the results disagree with another analysis
using hedonic regression.
A further study comparing neural networks with regression techniques also reached
conflicting conclusions (Duliba, 1991). In this work a neural network was trained to
predict overall levels of performance in the transport industry. It performed better than a
random effects specification regression model, but worse than a fixed effects specification
regression model. It seems that more work is certainly required in this area to further
evaluate the usefulness of neural networks.
Review of neural networks 255
Air transport
The realm of avionics is highly specialised, and is largely dominated by a few large
research organisations. Much of the work is kept secret for defence reasons. Therefore
only two papers are mentioned in this review to give the reader a brief insight into the sort
of work being carried out (Mann and Hayhim, 1991; Beastall, 1989). Both concern
analysis of radar signals; learning vector quantisation is used in the first piece of work.
Maritime transport
Two contrasting pieces of work are mentioned here. A study has shown that neural
networks have potential for use in autonomous ship navigation in confined spaces
(Stamenkovich, 1991). An unusual aspect of this work is that the neural network is used
as a supervisor to advise a more microscopic conventional control model, rather than
control the ship directly.
The second paper concerns using learning vector quantisation networks in an image
processing system which recognises and classifies profile images of ships (Lo and Bavarian,
1991). Whilst this particular piece of work is probably of little civilian interest, it never-
theless points to possible future applications of neural networks in the maritime industry.
Submarine vehicles
A surprisingly large amount of work has been carried out concerning autonomous
submarine vehicles, and much of the work involves neural networks (Demuth and
Springsteen, 1990). Again, this field is highly specialised and not of such general interest.
Metro operations
A recent paper discusses the possibility of using a combination of fuzzy logic and neural
networks to control the acceleration and deceleration of a metro train (Hartani et al.,
1994). This very interesting paper describes a complex hierarchical hybrid decision making
system which contains neural networks similar to Learning Vector Quantisation.
Trajk control
A single paper in this review deals with a neural network directly attacking a traffic
control problem (Nahatsuji and Terutoshi, 1991). A neural network was trained to
suggest the optimum green splits for a single intersection. This was later extended to a
network of three intersections. Whilst the work is undoubtedly interesting, the authors
do not make it clear how they prepared the data sets used to train and test the neural
network.
ANALYSIS
Several general points are worthy of further discussion:
Paradigms used
Table 2 shows the distribution of papers reporting the use of different paradigms. It
must be pointed out that not all of the networks described in the papers follow exact
Table 2
Paradigm
Backpropagation
Learning vector quantisation
Adaptive resonance theory
Self-organising map
ADALINE
Hopfield
Basis functions
Counterpropagation
Boltzmann machine
Number
36
7
4
2
I
I
I
I
I
TR c 311-f
256 Mark Dougherty
textbook definitions. In these cases I have attempted to place the work in the closest
category. Where a paper reports using more than one paradigm I have entered it in both
categories; hence the total number of examples of use exceeds the number of papers
reported. Unfortunately there are insufficient examples of the use of many of the
paradigms to draw any particular conclusions as to their usefulness for different types of
problem; this difficulty is exacerbated by the lack of detailed numerical analysis of results
in some papers.
As yet there is little sign of a methodological approach to the detailed design of a neural
network for a particular task, with most researchers applying simple trial and error tech-
niques to find optimum configurations. Work in this area within the transport field has
really only reached the initial stage of selecting a paradigm (Faghri and Hua, 1992) and
this work is very general in nature. It also pays little attention to the Kohonen learning
based paradigms of learning vector quantisation and self organising feature maps, which
are indicated by Table 2 as being very promising for transport applications. Developments
in this area should be watched closely, as it is one of the key questions which needs to be
solved in order to make the technology more accessible. It will also greatly enhance the
credibility of the field.
Neural networks as sub-systems
An interesting point to notice is that only one paper (Nahatsuji and Terutoshi, 1991)
concerns a neural network being used to directly alter traffic control parameters. Whilst
many of the other papers describe work with a long-term goal of enhancing traffic control
systems, the emphasis is very much on neural networks carrying out higher level functions
such as pattern recognition or short-term forecasting. Thus it is clear that the experience
of most designers is that neural networks are of little use unless they are embedded into
systems which contain further algorithms and/or decision making capabilities.
Performance comparisons
An area where much of the reported work is inadequate is making careful comparisons
(either qualitative or quantitative) with alternative techniques. In some papers, no com-
parative work is quoted or reported and therefore the reader is left in the dark as to
whether the results justified using neural networks. Since one often quoted benefit of using
neural networks is that they can outperform conventional methods of analysis, more solid
evidence of this would be comforting.
In the authors own experience (Clark et al., 1993) carefully devised methods of
statistical analysis can reach similar levels of performance to neural networks. A further
complication described in this reference is that different measures of success may not
completely agree. It is obvious that further work is often needed to establish confidence
limits and the statistical significance of the results. Unfortunately, the exuberant
enthusiasm for neural networks displayed by many authors sometimes tempts them into
turning a blind eye to this task.
Further evidence of a less than rigorous approach can be seen in a common ruse
employed by several authors. This is to attack a highly non-linear problem with neural
networks and then perform a token linear regression on the data by way of comparison.
Not surprisingly, neural networks seem superior under such circumstances, but a trained
statistician is unlikely to be impressed! The reader is urged to examine the relationship
between statistics and neural networks much more closely (Ripley, 1992).
Useability
Neural networks are preferred as a method of analysis for reasons other than improved
numerical accuracy. Many authors report that it is often quicker to build a neural net-
work model rather than a statistical one, because much of the task of model specification
and tuning is automated. Another benefit is that neural networks have none of the
preconceptions which many algorithmic models are forced into by the designer, who
Review of neural networks 251
naturally builds the model along the lines he or she believes it to behave through their own
experience.
On the downside, it has to be conceded that neural networks suffer from their black
box nature. This is particularly noticeable when they are compared against tech-
niques such as multinomial logit models. The main problem to be faced is that often
the main reason for modelling a system is not necessarily to produce an accurate model
but rather to reach some understanding. A good example of this difficulty can be seen in
Pant and Balakrishman (1994) where a neural network is compared against a binary-logit
model for modelling gap acceptance at an intersection. Although the neural network
actually performed better in numerical terms, it is arguably the logit model which is more
useful, as it produces a utility function for each parameter and the reader therefore gains a
much greater insight into the model. Elasticity testing of the neural network (Dougherty
and Joint, 1992; Collins and Evans, 1994) is a possible solution which can give the best
of both worlds. Unfortunately it is quite a time consuming and painstaking process;
advances in this area are outstripping the neural network development tools currently
available.
From a point of view of the useability of networks, the overwhelming majority of the
authors quoted in the paper reported very positively. However, if the neural network
being built is to be implemented in an operational context, one needs to consider the
difficulties mentioned below regarding implementation and retraining.
Implementation
Neural network applications in transport are reaching the stage where significant
amounts of research are expected to be implemented in actual systems. The question of
stepping from an abstract computer model to a fully-implemented prototype must be
addressed. This can be problematical if the work has been developed in a simulation
environment. Some commercial simulations offer the possibility of converting neural
networks into modules of code, otherwise it may be necessary to code up the networks
anyway; this rather undermines the argument for buying a simulation environment. A
further possibility is to consider a hardware implementation of a neural network. This is
likely to only be of interest if designing a real-time system with heavy computational
requirements.
A major problem which those using neural networks have only started to address is the
problem of neural networks becoming out of date once installed in the field. Two possible
solutions to this have been put forward. One can collect new data at regular intervals and
retrain the networks; the main questions are how often this must be done, and what the
cost of such an operation is. This will of course depend on how easy it is to measure
the data, and whether expensive manual preprocessing is needed to select a balanced
sample of all conditions (Collins and Evans, 1994). Alternatively, paradigms such as
adaptive resonance theory can continue their training on-line in the field, as, unlike other
paradigms they do not forget earlier relationships, meaning that a balanced sample
is not required. This allows more ad hoc retraining schedules and is more flexible. Unfor-
tunately, ART and its derivatives are designed purely for classification and have only
binary outputs. This makes them unsuitable for the many transport related problems
which need continuous variables as output such as traffic flow forecasting or travel time
estimates.
As well as the problem of becoming out of date, one must also consider what happens
to system performance in the case of missing or incorrect data, either during training or
after implementation. Although fault tolerance is often quoted as an advantage of using
neural networks (Beale and Jackson, 1990) the authors own experience of such problems
has not been very encouraging (Dougherty and Cobbett, 1994). This is an area ripe for
future research; as up to this moment very few neural network based systems have
actually been implemented on street and thus these issues have often not been examined.
This returns us to the problem of finding better and less labour intensive ways of building
representative training data sets.
258
Data sources
Mark Dougherty
A good set of data is an essential requirement for working with neural networks. It
is clear that it is much easier to obtain data for some transport applications than others.
In some cases, it has not been possible to obtain sufficient quantities of data, and as
previously mentioned, simulated data have often been used (Hginyen and Widrow, 1989;
Ritchie and Cheu, 1993). It is important to remember that much more data are often
required for training than testing; therefore where data are limited it may be better to
reserve what real data are available for the testing phase, as this allows more credible
results to be produced.
Cost-benefit analysis of using neural networks
Even if neural networks can outperform alternative techniques for particular types of
analysis, little attention is paid to the question of whether the benefit in performance is
worthwhile. What investment is needed in terms of computing platform (both hardware
and software) and staff training to realise the benefits of neural computing? With appro-
priate tools and skills available, does a neural network solution take more or less effort to
achieve than a conventional one? These important issues are rarely considered in the
papers reviewed, but are important if interest in neural networks is to be sustained.
For those considering the backpropagation paradigm (which has been used in the
vast majority of transport applications), the investment required is quite small. Various
backpropagation simulators exist in the public domain, and there are comparatively few
parameters of the network for the user to optimise. When considering many other
paradigms, the situation is much less clear-cut. The user will probably either have to write
code to build the networks by hand (in which case an object-oriented language such as
C + + is strongly recommended), or purchase a relatively expensive commercial simu-
lation. The latter has a lot to recommend it, especially if the user wishes to experiment
with several different network paradigms.
CONCLUSIONS
Many of the problems that those studying transport systems are attempting to solve are
highly non-linear. Data sources are often numerous and complex. Neural networks show
great promise as a useful tool for analysing these data, but there is much work still to be
done, particularly in regard to model interpretation and validation.
Larger and more comprehensive comparative studies are needed. Not only should
neural networks be compared with state-of-the-art statistical techniques, but different
paradigms apart from backpropagation should be experimented with more often, so that
a clearer picture emerges as to the best techniques to use for different problems. Since
backpropagation, learning vector quantisation and adaptive resonance theory have been
the most widely used paradigms, and are representative of supervised, reinforcement and
self-organising learning, respectively, it is suggested that these three paradigms could be
considered a standard tool kit for transport applications of neural networks.
More detailed documentation of how neural network based systems in transport have
been built would enable a more methodological approach to emerge. Too much work is
based around optimising network configurations and data sets by trial and error, which
although a useful technique for prototyping, is not suitable for real implementations
where the costs of development must be estimated accurately before work starts.
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