The occurrence of adverse weather exacerbates traffic flow conditions, often leading to\nsevere traffic congestions. Many studies have been conducted based on field-collected data to obtain\nthe effects of weather on traffic flow characteristics. However, there is a limitation for filed data-based\nstudies, in that weather conditions and traffic conditions are both noncontrollable and nonrepeatable,\nmaking it difficult to comprehensively assess the influence of weather conditions, especially the rare\nextreme weather conditions, on traffic flow characteristics. This paper proposes to assess these effects\nwith the combination of driving simulator and traffic simulation. A driving simulator can collect\ndriving behavior by conducting weather-related driving simulation experiments, while a microscopic\ntraffic simulation program can evaluate the changes in traffic flow characteristics by inputting driving\nbehavior parameters coming from the driving simulator. The proposed method can overcome the\nlimitation of the field data-based approach. In this paper, the structure of the assessment platform is\nintroduced at first. Then a verification experiment is conducted to measure the influences of adverse\nweather conditions on traffic flow characteristics. The verification experiment results show that\nthe influences of adverse weather on traffic flow characteristics have consistent tendencies with\noutcomes from previous research and demonstrate that the method is practicable for the analysis of\nthe influence of weather on traffic flow characteristics. This paper provides a practical way to analyze\nthe influence of weather on traffic flow from driving behaviorâ??s point of view.
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