TY - JOUR TI - A Multi-Objective Approach for the Calibration of Microscopic Traffic Flow Simulation Models T2 - IEEE Access SP - 103124 EP - 103140 AU - C. Cobos AU - A. Paz AU - J. Luna AU - C. Erazo AU - M. Mendoza PY - 2020 KW - calibration KW - evolutionary computation KW - nonparametric statistics KW - optimisation KW - road traffic KW - search problems KW - statistical testing KW - traffic engineering computing KW - generalized cost solution KW - low-cost solution KW - calibration approaches KW - multiobjective characteristics KW - microscopic traffic-flow simulation models KW - dominated solutions KW - traffic flow models KW - calibration problem KW - calibration criterion KW - comprehensive cost solution KW - Calibration KW - Optimization KW - Microscopy KW - Memetics KW - Linear programming KW - Search problems KW - Solid modeling KW - Multi-objective optimization KW - calibration KW - traffic flow simulation KW - MOGBHS KW - NSGA-II DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2999081 JO - IEEE Access IS - SN - 2169-3536 VO - 8 VL - 8 JA - IEEE Access Y1 - 2020 AB - The calibration of traffic-flow simulation models continues to be a significant problem without a generalized, comprehensive, and low-cost solution. Existing calibration approaches either have not explicitly addressed the multi-objective characteristics of the problem or determining their hyperparameters requires significant effort. In addition, statistical evaluation of alternative solution algorithms is not performed to ensure dominance and stability. This study proposes an adaptation and advanced implementation of the Multi-Objective Global-Best Harmony Search (MOGBHS) algorithm for calibrating microscopic traffic-flow simulation models. The adapted MOGBHS provides five key capabilities for solving the proposed problem including 1) consideration of multiple objectives, 2) easily extendable to memetic versions, 3) simultaneous consideration of continuous and discrete variables, 4) efficient ordering of no dominated solutions, 5) relatively easy tuning of hyperparameters, and 6) easily parallelization to maximize exploration and exploitation without increasing computing time. Three traffic flow models of different dimensionality and complexity were used to test the performance of seventeen metaheuristics for solving the calibration problem. The efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithms were tested based on convergence, minimization of errors, calibration criterion, and two statistical nonparametric tests. The proposed approach dominated all alternative algorithms in all cases and provided the most stable and diverse solutions. ER -