Modeling phase diagrams as stochastic processes with application in vehicular traffic flow

Motivated by the similarity between the fundamental diagram of vehicular traffic and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of ideal gases, this paper proposed a methodology to model the fundamental diagram as a stochastic process which also applies to other real world systems with similar nature. A concrete example is provided to illustrate the application of the methodology where the fundamental diagram of vehicular traffic is modeled as a stochastic process to capture the scattering effect in flow-density relationship. A verification study was conducted on the model using empirical data and the statistical analysis shows that the overall quality of the fitted stochastic process is acceptable. Related existing efforts are referenced to the proposed stochastic fundamental diagram where their similarities and differences are elaborated. Further discussion is carried out on the significance of the stochastic fundamental diagram as well as the proposed methodology with an additional real-world example to illustrate its applications. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.