Proceedings of 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control

Howard Civil Service International House, Taipei, Taiwan, April 9-11, 2015

Modeling and Control of Urban Road Intersections

with Incidents via Timed Petri Nets
Liang Qi
Dept. of Computer Sci. & Tech.
Tongji University
Shanghai, P. R. China
qiliangsdkd@163.com

MengChu Zhou
Dept. of Computer Sci. & Tech.
Tongji Univ., Shanghai, China &
ECE, NJIT, Newark, NJ, USA
zhou@njit.edu

WenJing Luan
Dept. of Computer Sci. & Tech.
Tongji University
Shanghai, P. R. China
wenjingmengjing@163.com

can be effectively prevented. We can then have the situation as

shown in Fig. 1(b). It is the traffic signal control strategy that
can help us effectively stop the traffic flow driving towards
the incidental intersection. In this paper, we will propose a
traffic signal control system offering traffic light control
policies with normal and emergency operations. If the
clearance of the incident costs little time, and the former
intersection will not be blocked, then the traffic light
emergency strategy needs not be adopted. Also, some other
traffic guidance can be adopted warning the driver not to enter
the blocking lanes.

AbstractPetri nets (PNs) are well utilized as a visual and

mathematical formalism in modeling, analysis and control of
urban traffic. This work adopts timed Petri nets to design a
traffic-signal-based emergency control policy such that
emergency response is provided and the incident-induced
large-scale congestion is prevented. A reachability graph method
is adopted to demonstrate how the models are used to enforce the
phase of traffic signal transitions. It improves the state of the art
in traffic incident response and control.

Index TermsPetri nets, traffic safety, intersection incident

control, timed Petri nets, traffic signal control

Petri nets (PNs) [10] [11] are a well-founded model applied

to the modeling, analysis and control of urban traffic, such as
traffic light control systems [12] [13], and assessment studies
in the transportation field [14] [15]. The reachability tree and
structural analysis methods [16] [17] and simulation tools [18]
are used to analyze the constructed models.

I. INTRODUCTION

raffic incident management (TIM), making a systematic

effort to detect, respond to, and remove traffic incidents,
aims to offer the rapid recovery of traffic safety and capacity
[1] and lead to many measurable benefits [2], such as a
decrease in fuel consumption, incident duration, secondary
incidents, and traffic jams. In the past thirty decades, ITS
technologies were recognized as valuable tools and being used
worldwide in traffic incident detection [3]-[5], verification [5],
response [6], and communication [7].
Urban road intersection is one of the most accident-prone
zones in road networks. For different countries and regions,
between 30% and 60% of all injury accidents and up to one
third of the fatalities occur at intersections [8]. Hence, it is
imperative to effectively enforce the management and control
of intersections with such incident (called incidental
intersections in the following discussions). In order to
guarantee the safety of an incidental intersection, our prior
work designed an emergency traffic control system by
adopting cameras and traffic signals for an incidental
intersection [9]. When such incident happens, large-scale
congestion appears with the corresponding neighboring
intersections being blocked. Fig. 1(a) illustrates an incidental
intersection and its induced congestion. An incident is
occurring at the right intersection blocking the cross area of
lanes II and III and forbidding the traffic flow from road RD
which is divided into two distinct zones: a downstream queue
storage area (DA) and an upstream reservoir (UR). When
RD is full of vehicles, the blue heavy-shaded areas (called
critical areas in the following discussions) in the left
intersection may be blocked by the corresponding traffic flow
from lanes II, III and IV. Their blockage induces heavier
congestion in the yellow light-shaded areas. If some flow is
forbidden properly once the incident is detected, large-scale
congestion (especially the congestion in the light-shaded areas)

In this paper, we adopt a kind of timed Petri nets, named

Deterministic and Stochastic Petri Nets (DSPNs) [19] [20] to
design the traffic emergency control policy for an intersection
facing emergency in order to offer traffic light strategies
preventing large-scale traffic congestion. There are three kinds
of facilities: a set of traffic lights installed at each intersection,
several warning light employed at intersections, and sensors
deployed at each intersection. An Information Processing
n
II

w
s

b
c

III

185

An
Incident

DA

UR

Critical
Areas

RD

IV

IV

(a)
n

II

II

w
s

C1
C2

C8
C2

C7

C1

C8
C7

s_e

b
e
III

C3

n_w
C6

Critical
Areas

C3

C5

C4

Sensor A

IV

C6
C5

C 4
DA

UR
RD

(b)

Fig. 1. Congestion at an incidental intersection.

978-1-4799-8069-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

II

Congestions

Sensor A

IV

An
Incident

2
6) M: P is a marking function, where pP, M(p) is the
number of tokens in p, and M0 denotes the initial marking;
7) : Td

Information Process Center

In a DSPN, a deterministic transition t is attached with a

fixed enabling duration (t) that is known, and if t becomes
enabled, it waits for (t), and after that, fires instantaneously.
In particular, if the enabling duration is an infinitesimal
denoted by , then the transition, called an immediate one,
immediately fires when it becomes enabled. For convenience,
in the following discussions, t is called a deterministic
transition to distinguish it from an immediate one if (t).
However, a stochastic transition is associated with an
exponential function with a firing rate , and the enabling
duration of the transition complies with the function.
Graphically, immediate, deterministic and stochastic
transitions are represented by thin bars, thick black rectangles
and empty rectangles, respectively. Moreover, an inhibitor arc
is used to decrease the model complexity. It links a place p to
a transition t with a small circle attached to t. By default, as for
usual arcs, an inhibitor arc has a weight of 1. Thereby, it
prevents t from firing as long as p is marked. It can also have a
weight n, in which case, it forbids the firing of t while there
are at least n tokens in p.

Emergency
Operation

An accident is happening
Traffic signal

Traffic signal

is the firing time for deterministic transition t;

8) : Te + is the firing rate vector whose element (t) is

the firing rate of transition t that is associated with
exponentially distributed time delay.

Sensors

Normal
Operation

The accident is cleared

Fig. 2. Architecture of the traffic emergency control for intersections.

Center (IPC) is deployed. The system architecture is shown in

Fig. 2: the blue dark arrows describe the data interactions
among the above facilities and IPC, where the sensors are
controlled by IPC and the collected data are analyzed, and
traffic light strategies are selected and implemented with
switches between normal operations and emergency ones
according to the computation of IPC.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
reviews the DSPN model. Section III constructs a traffic
incident detection model and builds a normal traffic light
operation model using DSPNs. Section IV determines the time
when emergency light operations start and stop by calculating
the number of vehicles in the road section between the
intersections, and then presents the proposed emergency light
operation to prevent large-scale congestion. A reachability
graph method is used to verify the constructed model.
Concluding remarks are made in Section VI.

When a DSPN model is built, according to the firing rules

of DSPN, its reachability graph can be constructed. In order to
reduce the size of the graph, each arc corresponds to a
sequence of transitions containing only one timed transition
(deterministic or stochastic one). Besides, if more than one
transition fires at the same time, these transitions are put in a
parenthesis and then attached to the corresponding arc.

II. DSPNS MODEL

III. NORMAL SYSTEM MODEL

In this section, we review the definition of Deterministic and

Stochastic Petri Nets (DSPNs). First, we present some basic
notations: is a real number set, + is the set of positive real
numbers; ={0, 1, 2, } is a natural number set, += /{0} is
the positive integer set, and k={0, 1, 2, , k} and k+={1, 2,
, k}, k +.

In this section, we present a PN construction process for

normal traffic signal operation, sensor operation and warning
light operation. We use, as an example, the incident happening
at an intersection blocking vehicles as shown in Fig. 1 to do
so.

A PN is a particular kind of bipartite directed graphs

populated by three types of objects. They are places,
transitions, and directed arcs connecting places to transitions
and transitions to places [9], [10]. Deterministic and stochastic
delays can be associated with transitions in a PN, leading to
DSPNs [19] [20]. Formally, a DSPN is a 8-tuple =(P, T, F,
W, H, M0, , ), where

A. Traffic signal model

In this paper, four traffic signal light sets are deployed at
directions north (n), east (e), south (s) and west (w). Each set
has five signal lights: a red light signal (R), a yellow (Y), a
green with a straight arrow (GS), a green with a left turn arrow
(GL), and a green with a right turn arrow (GR), as shown in
Fig. 3. The phase transition of the traffic light control system
adopted in this paper consists of four phases a, b, c and d in
Fig. 4. These operations are described as follows. In phase a,
the northbound and southbound vehicles are allowed to turn
left and turn right at the same time, while in phase c, the
eastbound and westbound vehicles are allowed to turn left and
turn right. In phase b, the northbound and southbound vehicles
are allowed to go straight, while in phase d, eastbound and
westbound vehicles are allowed to go straight. Note that this
strategy can greatly ensure the safe pass of the pedestrians.
Thus two green lights (i.e., GL and GS) are turned on
concurrently. The schedule of traffic light signals, i.e., the

1) P is a finite set of places;

2) T=TdTe is a finite set of transitions, partitioned into two
disjoint sets, Tdet and Texp, representing deterministic and
exponential ones, respectively, with PT and PT=;
3) F(PT)(TP) is a set of directed arcs;
4) HPT is a set of inhibitor arcs from p to t;
5) W: (PT)(TP)
is a weight function, where
W(f)>0 if fFH and otherwise W(f)=0;

186

3
where R(M0)={M0-M7}, and for convenience, we denote M as
the state of the signal. Thus M0=(Rn, Re, Rs, Rw), M1=(GLn, GRn,
Re, GLs, GRs, Rw), M2=(GSn, Re, GSs, Rw), M3=(Yn, Re, Ys, Rw),
M4=(Rn, Re, Rs, Rw), M5=(Rn, GLe, GRe, Rs, GLw, GRw), M6=(Rn,
GSe, Rs, GSw), and M7=(Rn, Ye, Rs, Yw). Since this graph is a
finite circle containing all transitions, the DSPN model in Fig.
5 is live and reversible. Thus, the time necessary to complete a
circle from marking Mi, i 7 to the same one is 70 except that
the time needed for M0 to M0 for the first time is 73. Note that
the order of the traffic signal lights forms a cycle directing the
signal phases operating in a cycle abcda.

Fig. 3. Five signal lights in a light set.

n
e

IV

IV

s
I

I
III

III

II

II

Phase b

Phase a
IV

B. Sensor operation model

We deploy sensors to help us collect the traffic data and
operate certain control policy. Several warning lights are
employed at the illustrating scenario, and nine sensors
deployed at each intersection including a sensor S and eight
counters C1-C8, for the purpose of gathering incident
occurrence and counting vehicles, respectively.

IV

I
III
II

Phase c

III
II

Phase d

We build a DSPN model of the detection work of sensor S

as shown in Fig. 7(a). The firing of thappen depicts that the
occurrence of an incident is detected. It is an infrequent event
and unpredictable. A token is filled in pacc if tacc fires. tcleared is
enabled meaning that the incident has been cleared. Then

Fig. 4. Four phase transition of the traffic control system.

traffic light control is depicted in the PN model in Fig. 5. We

are interested in a control policy for an intersection where the
following statements are true:
1) The order of the traffic signal lights forms a cycle;

pw8

2) The system starts when the lights are all red;

3) A short yellow duration is adopted among transitions
from green to red; and

tw2

tw8

pw4

pw5
GRw

The DSPN model of the traffic signal control strategy is

depicted in Fig. 5. The meanings of places and transitions with
their enabling durations are designed in Table I. For
convenience, we denote Xn, Ye, Zs, and Ww as the color of
traffic lights along directions n, e, s and w, respectively, where
X, Y, Z, W{R, Y, GS, GL, GR}. Suppose that the global time
is G0=0 at the initial state, that is, only px1, x{n, e, s, w}
contains a token and ti1, i{n, s} are enabled at G0. They fire
after 5 seconds when G=5 where a token is moved from pi1 to
pi6 and pi7, respectively, enabling and firing ti5 and ti6,
immediately, while each of p2, p3, p6 and p7 obtains a token. pi4
and pi5 each obtain a token when ti2 fires at n and s, thus
resulting in that ti7 and ti8 are enabled. ti7 and ti8 with
(ti7)=(ti8)=10 fire after 10 seconds at G=15. Then a token is
moved from pi4 and pi5 to pi8 and pi9, respectively, enabling
and firing ti2 with a token deposited to pi3. It denotes that the
signal lights GS at n and s are turning on from the global time
15 to 35. Then ti3 is fired resulting in that pi2 obtains a token.
That means the signal changes from GS to Y and the duration
time of GS is 20 seconds. At the same time, p1, p4, p5 and p8
obtains a token. Then ti4 with (ti4)=3 and tj1 with (tj1)=5,
j{e, w} are enabled, and fire at G=38, and G=40,
respectively. The duration time of Y is 3 seconds. The traffic
signal light turns to GL and GR at e and w after Y turn to R at
n and s. Then the signal lights from both e and w turn
successively to GL and GR, GS, Y, and returns to its initial
state when G=73. Transitions ti1 enabled at G=70 fires when
G=75, and same transition firing sequence is executed
repeatedly. The reachability graph is presented in Fig. 6,

tw5

tw6

pw6

pw7

pn6 tn5

GLn
pn4

tn7

pn8

pn7 tn6

pn5

tn8

tn2
pn9

tn1

tw7

GLw

4) For insuring traffic safety, all traffic lights are all red
when the phase transition completed.

pw9
tn3

tn4

GRn

pn3

pn2

pn1
Rn

GSn

Yn

p7

p1
p2

tw1

pw3

Ye

tw3
Yw

pw1

Rw

p3

ts8

te3
te1
pe7

pe6

te6

te5

GRe
pe5

pe4

te8

te7

p5
GSs

Ys

ps3
ps9

pe2

pe3
GSe

p6

p4

tw4

pe1
te4

p8

GSe

pw2

Re

ts3

GRs
tn6 ps7
ps5

Rs

ps2

ps1

ts4

ts1
ts7

ps8

ps4

pe9

ts5 ps6

te2

GLe

pe8

GLs

Fig. 5. DSPN model of normal operation of traffic signal.

TABLE I.
Place
px1
px2
px3
px4
px5
px6-px9
p1-p8

MEANING OF TRANSITIONS AND PLACES AND TRANSITION

DELAYS OF FIG. 5 WHERE x{n, e, s, w}.

Signification
R
Y
GS
GL
GR
For control
For control

Transition
tx1
tx7 and tx8
tx3
tx4
others

(tj4)

(tj3)
M7

M0

(ti1),(ti5,ti6)

Signification
Change R to GL and GR
Change GL and GR to GS
Change GS to Y
Change Y to R
Immediate transitions

M1

(tj7,tj8),(tj2)
M6

(ti7,ti8),(ti2)

M2

M5

(ti3)

M3

(tj1),(tj5,tj6)

(Sec.)
5
10
20
3

M4

(ti4)

Fig. 6. The reachability graph of the model in Fig. 5, where i{n, s} and j{e,
w}.
187

4
tcleared fires if the clearing process is finished. The duration of
incident clearance described by the enabling duration of a
deterministic transition tcleared is supposed to be deterministic.
Finally, we suppose that there is no overlap between
consecutive incidents, which is modeled via making place pacc
with one token only.
pC4_on

pacc

pacc

pwarn_on

pC4_on_off

pacc

pacc

Pwarn_on

(a)

pC3_on

tCi_off_on

tCi

pnum_i

tC7_on_off

pn3

pn2

pC7 tC7
pC7_off tC7_reset tC7_off_on

tw5

tw6

pw6

pw7
tw1

p7

p1
p2

pC7_on

te4

p8

pe2

pw3

pC7_off_on

te3
pe3

pw2

p6

p4
p3

p5

pC8_on_off

te1
pe7

pe6

te6

te5

pe5

pe4

te8

te7

pw1
ps3

ps2

ps9

ts8

ps5

tn6 ps7

ps8

ts7

ps4

ts5 ps6

ts3

ps1
ts4

tC6

tC8_on_off
pC8
tC8_reset t

pC8_off

tC8
C8_off_on

pC8_on

pC8_off_on

pe9

te2

pe8

pC5_off

pC6

pC6_on_off

pC5_off_on

tC5_reset
tC5_off_on tC5_on_off
pC5
tC5

pC5_on_off

pC5_on

Those counters are controlled by the traffic light strategy

such that the sensors from the corresponding directions are on
when vehicles are permitted to pass at certain time while
others sleep for saving energy as described in Fig. 8. At the
initial state in the model, all counters do not work. Then ti1
i{n, s} fires, and ti5 and ti6 fire immediately, such that GLi
and GRi are on and Phase a begins. Counters 1, 2, 5 and 6
supervising the corresponding roads are on, while others with
no vehicles passing through their supervised road remain off.
IV. EMERGENCY OPERATIONS

Pwarn_off

A. Computation of Maximal Vehicles

In this section, we would like to compute how many vehicles
that road section RD with two lanes in Fig. 1 can hold such
that the critical areas in the left intersection are not blocked.
That is, we need to compute the length of UR. First, we define
the following notation to describe the traffic conditions:
LRD, LUR, LDA: the length of road section RD, UR, and DA,
respectively;
Lh: the mean headway (distance between the fronts of
successive vehicles in the same lane of traffic) of two queuing
vehicles;
Lh: the least mean headway of two successive queuing
vehicles when the following one starts to move from the
queuing status;
a: the mean acceleration of the vehicle;
v: the maximal speed of the vehicle.
We do our computation based on the following assumptions:
a) The values of the above notations are known as constant
numbers except LUR and LDA;
b) The two intersections are installed with same signal phases,
as depicted in Figs. 4 and 5, and Table I, which work
synchronously as shown in Fig. 9. For simplicity, we denote
a composite phase ab as that the former intersection is in
phase a while the latter one is in phase b;
b) Normally, after phase cd in each circle, there is no vehicle
remaining in RD; and
d) The maximal number of vehicles that RD can hold such that
the left intersection cannot be blocked is to be computed in

Fig. 7. Modelings incident detection and counter operations.

8

pC7_on_off

Fig. 8. Sensor operation work controlled by signal light control strategy.

(e)

TABLE II. MEANING OF PLACES WHERE i

pn1

pC6_on

pveh_6

(d)

tn2
pn9

pe1

pC6_off_on

ppass_i

pCi_on

pn8

tn8

tC6_reset
tC6_off_on tC6_on_off

tgen_w_6

tgen_6

tn7

pn5

pC6_off

pveh_i
tpass_i

pn4

pn7 tn6

ts1

Pwarn_off

Pwarn_on

tCi_on_off

pCi

pw5

tC3_off_on t
C3_reset pC3_off
tC3 pC3

pC3_on_off

pCi_off
tCi_reset

pw4

tn3

tn4

tC3_on_off

pcleared
(c)

(b)

tw8

pn6 tn5

tw3

tcleared

tcleared

tw7

pC2_off_on

tn1

tw4

pon_off

pon_off

tC2
tC2_on_off tC2_off_on
pC2
tC2_reset
pC2_off

pw9

pC3_off_on

poff_on

pwarn_off

pC4_off
tC4_off_on t
C4_reset
tC4 pC4
tC4_on_off

thappen
poff_on

tw2

pw8

phappen

thappen

tC1_on_off tC1_off_on
pC1
tC1_reset

pC4_off_on

A DSPN model of counter Ci is described in Fig. 7(d). The

initial marking of the model is that there is only one token in
place pCi_closed describing that Ci is not working. When Ci starts
to work, tCi_c_o fires by moving the token from pCi_closed to
pCi_open, and then by firing tCi, Ci counts the vehicle passing
denoted by the fire of tpass_i. The total number of vehicles
sensed by Ci during its working interval time equals to the
number of tokens in pCi. The firing of tCi_closed depicts that Ci is
closed. Then a token is filled in pCi_closed and an immediate
transition tCi_reset is enabled if pCi contains any tokens. By firing
tCi_reset, Ci is reset and turns to its initial state. The generation
of vehicles in road RD in Fig. 1 is denoted by two exponential
transitions tgen_6 and tgen_w_6 in Fig. 7(e) with different firing
rate as shown in Table II.
i

pC2_on_off

pC1_off_on

pC1_off

We build the warning light work model as shown in Fig.

7(b) describing that a warning light switches between on and
off depicted by pwarn_on and pwarn_off, respectively. The
transitions toff_on and ton_off are immediate ones. However, the
warning light is controlled by the incident situation, i.e., if an
incident happens, the warning light turns on, while if the
incident is cleared, the light turns off. The controlling model is
depicted in Fig. 7(c).

pC2_on

pC1_on

tC1

pC1_on_off

Place
i

Signification
An incident is happening

Transition
thappen

pacc

An incident is detected

tcleared

Signification
An incident is sensed
happening
An incident is sensed cleared

pacc

No incident is detected

toff_on

Warning light is turned on

pwarn_on
pwarn_off
pCi_off
pCi_on
pCi
pveh_i
pnum_i

The warning light is on

The warning light is off
Ci is off
Ci is on
Vehicles counted by Ci
A vehicle will pass
The number of vehicles
that has passed

tno_off
tCi_on_off
tCi_off_on
tCi
tCi_reset
tpass_i
tgen_6

ppass_i

A vehicle has passed

tgen_w_6

Warning light is turned off

Ci is turned off
Ci is turned on
Ci does the count
Ci resets the count to 0
A vehicle is passing
The generation of vehicles
with a rate 6_1 when
warning lights are off
The generation of vehicles
with a rate 6_2 when
warning lights are on

188

5
TABLE III. MEANING OF PLACES.

n
e

Place
pcap
pnor
pemm

IV

s
I
III
DA

UR

II

Signification
The number of vehicles in DA
Traffic signals are in normal operations
Traffic signals are in emergency operations

Road RD

TABLE IV. TRANSITIONS OF THE MODEL.

Phase b

Phase a
IV
I
III

Transition

Signification

temm

Traffic signals are changing from normal operations to

emergency ones
Traffic signals are recovered from emergency operations to
normal ones
GLn is forbidden when it is off
GLn is turned off when it is on
GRs is forbidden when it is off
GRs is turned off when it is on
Gw is forbidden when it is off
Gw is turned off when it is on

trec

II

Phase b

tnl
tnl
tsr
tsr
tws
tws

Phase c

IV
I
III
II

stop the traffic flow entering RD. A traffic light emergency

strategy model is designed in Figs. 10 and 11. The meaning of
transitions and places are shown in Tables III and IV where all
transitions are immediate ones.

Phase d

Phase c
IV
I

The control model shown in Fig. 10 has a directed arc

drawn from pcap to temm with a weight V. If the number of
vehicles in road RD reaches V, then immediate transition temm
is enabled and fires. pemm contains a token and traffic
emergency signals are turned on. When the incident is cleared,
i.e., there is no token in pacc, trec is enabled and fires such that
pnor obtains a token meaning that the traffic emergency signals
are off.

III
II

Phase d

Phase a

Fig. 9. The composite signal phases of two intersections.

such way that the last vehicle in DA starts to move while
the first vehicle in UR reaches DA, i.e., the queue in DA is
not full yet to force the stop of the vehicle in UR.

The detailed control policies are presented in Fig. 11. In Fig.

6, there are three different markings at which different
strategies need to be adopted as follows.

According to the assumption, we can obtain the following

formulae:
at 2
Lh Lh
2

LDA
V

Lh
2

LUR
V
t
2
v

LRD LDA LUR

1) At M1=(GLn, GRn, Re, GLs, GRs, Rw): there is a token in

pn4 and ps5. tnl and tsr are both enabled and fire
immediately such that GLn and GRs turn off immediately.
2) At M6=(Rn, GSe, Rs, GSw): there is a token in pw3, p2 and p3.
tws is enabled and fires immediately such that GSw turns
off immediately.
3) At other markings, i.e., M0, M2-M5, and M7, GLn, GRs and
GSw are off, and the traffic signals are resumed to the
normal ones. When M0[(ti1)>, i{n, s} and if ti1 fires, pn6
and ps7 obtain a token, respectively. Given pemm
containing a token, tn5 and ts6 are not enabled, while tnl
and tsr are enabled and fire immediately, thus generating a
token in each of pn8 and ps9. Thus, GLn, and GRs will not
be turned on. M5[(tw7, tw8)> and if tw7 and tw8 fire, either of
pw8 and pw9 obtains a token. Given pemm containing a token,
tw2 is not enabled, while tws is enabled and fires
immediately, thereby putting a token in pw2. Thus, GSs
will not be turned on.

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

where t denotes the mean time interval of the start-driving of a

queuing vehicle and its successive one. Then we can obtain
the maximal number of vehicles that RD can hold according to
the following formula:

2 LRD
V

2( Lh Lh )

h
a

(5)

trec

where x is a floor function, representing the integer

equal to or less than x.

pacc

pnor
tC6_reset

B. Traffic Light Emergency Strategy

pcap

temm

pemm

Then we propose traffic light emergency operations using

DSPNs. While vehicle count in road RD reaches V, traffic
emergency signals should be adopted such that the traffic
signals GLn, GRs and Gw should not be turned on in order to

tC3_reset
Fig. 10. The control model of the traffic light emmergency strategy.
189

6
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tnl
tnl

pemm
pemm
tw2

pw8

pw9

tw7

tw8

pw4

pw5

tw5

tw6

pw6

pw7

pn6 tn5

pn4

tn7

pn8

pn7 tn6

pn5

tn8

tn2
pn9

tn1
tn3

tn4
pn1

pn3

pn2

pe1

tws

p2

te4

p8

pe2

pw3

tw1
tws

p7

p1

te3

tw3

te1

pe3
pw2

p6

p4

tw4

p3

p5

pe7

pe6

te6

te5

pe5

pe4

te8

te7

pw1
ps3
ps8

ps4

ts7

ps2
ts3

ts5 ps6

ps1
ts4

ts1
ps9

ts8

ts6

ps5

pe9

ps7

te2

pe8

pemm
tsr
tsr

Fig. 11. Traffic light emergency operations.

C. Reachability Analysis
We obtain the reachability graph of the DSPN model in Fig.
11 as shown in Fig. 12. In the reachability graph, Mk=Mk,
k{0, 2-5, 7}, with the only difference that there exists a
token in Mk not in Mk; M1=(GRn, Re, GLs, Rw) with a token in
pn8 and ps9; and M6=(Rn, Rs, GSw) with a token in pw2. Since
this graph is a finite circle containing all transitions, the DSPN
model in Fig. 12 is live and reversible.
M7

(tj4)

(tj4)

temm

trec
M7

M0
trec

(ti1),(ti5,ti6)

temm

M1

M5
M4
(tj7,tj8),(tws,
(tj1),(tj5,tj6)
te2)
t
temm,tws
t
trec emm
trec emm
trec
(tj3)
(tj7,tj8),(tj2)
(tj1),(tj5,tj6)
M6
M5
M4

(tj3)

(ti7,ti8),(ti2)

temm,(tnl,tsr)

M6

M2

(ti3)

temm

trec
trec
(ti1),(ts5,tn6,
(ti8),(ti2)
tnl,tsr)
M 0
M1
M2

M3
trec

(ti3)

(ti4)

temm

M3

(ti4)

Fig. 12. The reachability graph of the model in Fig. 11.

V. CONCLUSIONS
This work for the first time proposes to use DSPNs to
design a traffic emergency control policy at an intersection
dealing with emergency to provide the effective prevention of
large-scale congestion. Their analysis is performed by a Petri
net reachability graph method. Future work should consider a
general traffic condition and consult some simulations to show
the advantages of the proposed policy in comparison with the
traditional self-evolution case.
REFERENCES
[1] K. Ozbay and P. Kachroo, Incident Management in Intelligent
Transportation Systems. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1999.
[2] P. B. Farradyne, Traffic Incident Management Handbook. Washington,
DC: Office Travel Management, Fed. Highway Admin., 2000.

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