Calibration and validation of a hybrid traffic flow model based on vehicle trajectory data from a field car-following experiment

The paper focuses on the calibration of the hybrid multi-scale modelling approach that incorporates multiple levels of traffic flow representation. This paper refers to a model already developed in the literature, the Hybrid Cellular Automata (CA) and Cell Transmission Model (CTM). We use vehicle trajectory data collected from a car-following field experiment on a circular road track to explore the calibration of the CA model concerning various cell lengths through two distinct approaches: simulating all vehicles within the closed loop and simulating each vehicle using data obtained from its respective follower. We also evaluate different methods for the CTM calibration with respect to the CA model. The major findings are: (1) the calibrated parameters obtained using the simulated leader approach display greater regularity across different cell lengths; (2) the Constrained Squared Error [CsqE] method for macroscopic calibrations yielded promising results, showcasing the lowest sum of squared errors between fundamental diagrams.