Traffic Flow Prediction Using Novel Spatial-Temporal Multi-Head Attention Graph Convolution Networks

Abstract

For urban development, accurate traffic flow prediction is crucial. Traffic flow prediction data can be used for optimizing public transportation systems, reducing congestion, planning road networks, and improving overall city infrastructure management. Despite numerous spatiotemporal methods used to forecast traffic flow, information aggregation at each site neither produce optimal results, because of the use non-Euclidean distance data. For more accurate results of traffic flow prediction, we propose a spatial-temporal multi-head attention graph convolution network (STMAGCN). It extracts temporal features using temporal convolutional layers and enriches nodes with spatial attention and multi-head attention mechanisms. By combining them, we can extract space characteristics more effectively. We also introduce a novel graph structure construction method that employs graph-based transformations to convert non-connected data points into a comprehensive graph structure, facilitating the effective application of our STMAGCN. This approach improves the predictive efficiency and accuracy of our model by ensuring seamless integration of disparate data sources. Experimental results indicate that the preferential extraction of spatiotemporal data significantly enhances traffic flow prediction accuracy. Compared with the latest models, our performance on the California Department of Transportation Performance Measurement System (PeMS) PeMS04 and PeMS08 datasets shows a slight improvement, with an average increase of 16.8%. Additionally, the average improvement in time is approximately 445.95%.