Smarter Traffic Prediction Using Big Data, In-Memory Computing, Deep Learning and GPUs

Road transportation is the backbone of modern economies, albeit it annually costs 1.25 million deaths and trillions of dollars to the global economy, and damages public health and the environment. Deep learning is among the leading-edge methods used for transportation-related predictions, however, the existing works are in their infancy, and fall short in multiple respects, including the use of datasets with limited sizes and scopes, and insufficient depth of the deep learning studies. This paper provides a novel and comprehensive approach toward large-scale, faster, and real-time traffic prediction by bringing four complementary cutting-edge technologies together: big data, deep learning, in-memory computing, and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). We trained deep networks using over 11 years of data provided by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the largest dataset that has been used in deep learning studies. Several combinations of the input attributes of the data along with various network configurations of the deep learning models were investigated for training and prediction purposes. The use of the pre-trained model for real-time prediction was explored. The paper contributes novel deep learning models, algorithms, implementation, analytics methodology, and software tool for smart cities, big data, high performance computing, and their convergence.