Traffic as a Mutually Adaptive System: Interdisciplinary Understanding of the System Characteristics of Traffic

Project within the International Network Programme 2020 granted from the Minsitry of Higher Education and Science. In this network, we want to bring together stakeholders and representatives from different disciplines to achieve a better joint understanding of the emergent, interdependent and dynamic system characteristics of traffic.
Traffic is a highly complex system where general traffic rules only account for a small part of the actual behaviors of traffic participants. Instead, it is shaped by constant negotiation based on personal agendas, local interactional rules, rules of conduct and context factors, leading to emergent characteristics. An account of what happens in shared social spaces thus requires a multi-disciplinary and possibly multi-cultural perspective, yet current no such approach is available that could predict the dynamically emerging behaviors of traffic participants. Prediction is however crucial, for instance, for the manufacturers of autonomous cars in order to design the cars to move in readable, i.e. transparent and interpretable, ways for the co-participants to understand what they are up to, to predict their behavior, and to coordinate with it. Furthermore, with new micro-mobility devices (e-bikes, e-scooters, delivery robots, e-skateboards, segways etc.) entering traffic, politicians and city designers need to understand and predict the development in order to plan our cities.