An Integrated Convolutional Neural Network-Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory-Attention Mechanism Model for Enhanced Highway Traffic Flow Prediction

The burgeoning expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has propelled Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) to the forefront of IoT applications, with accurate highway traffic flow prediction models playing a pivotal role in their development. Such models are essential for mitigating highway traffic congestion, reducing accident rates, and informing city planning and traffic management strategies. Given the inherent periodicity, non-linearity, and variability of highway traffic data, an innovative model leveraging a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM), and Attention Mechanism (AM) is proposed. In this model, feature extraction is accomplished via the CNN, which subsequently feeds into the BiLSTM for processing temporal dependencies. The integration of an AM enhances the model by weighting and fusing the BiLSTM outputs, thereby refining the prediction accuracy. Through a series of experiments and the application of diverse evaluation metrics, it is demonstrated that the proposed CNN-BiLSTM-AM model surpasses existing models in prediction accuracy and explainability. This advancement positions the model as a significant contribution to the field, offering a robust and insightful tool for highway traffic flow prediction.