Traffic incident analysis on urban arterials using ESE: A method for moderate length of time window

Moderate length of time window can get the best accurate result in detecting the key incident time using extended spectral envelope. This paper presents a method to calculate the moderate length of time window. Two factors are mainly considered: (1) The significant vertical lines consist of negative elements of eigenvectors; (2) the least amount of interruption. The elements of eigenvectors are transformed into binary variable to eliminate the interruption of positive elements. Sine transform is introduced to highlight the significant vertical lines of negative elements. A novel Quality Index (QI) is proposed to measure the effect of different lengths of time window. Empirical studies on four real traffic incidents in Beijing verify the validity of this method.