Mesoscopic Traffic Incidents

The mesoscopic simulator can simulate incidents placed at any point in a section. To simulate an incident, the mesoscopic simulator cuts the section into three parts: Before incident, Incident, and After incident.

The illustration below shows an example of the geometry used in mesoscopic simulation during a periodic section incident. The section in red is split into three sections. The incident, which lies between the Before and After sections has two lanes defined as closed.

Because incidents are modeled by cutting the section you might find it better to use the Lane Closure action, instead of using incidents, in mesoscopic simulations.

Periodic incidents in mesoscopic simulations cannot create incidents randomly throughout the section as they do in microsimulations, which work at a more granular level.

Incidents are activated and deactivated based on the times defined in the periodic incident action but they are activated across the whole of the area you have defined rather than at random places within the area. So, if you have drawn a box that is 40m long and crosses two lanes, the whole of that area will be blocked by the periodic incident when it occurs.