Performance analysis of LSTM model with multi-step ahead strategies for a short-term traffic flow prediction

Abstract

In this study, the effect of direct and recursive multi-step forecasting strategies on the short-term traffic flow forecast performance of the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model is investigated. To increase the reliability of the results, analyses are carried out with various traffic flow data sets. In addition, databases are clustered using the k-means++ algorithm to reduce the number of experiments. Analyses are performed for different time periods. Thus, the contribution of strategies to LSTM was examined in detail. The results of the recursive based strategy performances are not satisfactory. However, different versions of the direct strategy performed better at different time periods. This research makes an important contribution to clarifying the compatibility of LSTM and forecasting strategies. Thus, more efficient traffic flow prediction models will be developed and systems such as Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) will work more efficiently. A practical implication for researchers that forecasting strategies should be selected based on time periods.