Efficient Online Hyperparameter Learning for Traffic Flow Prediction

Compute efficiency is an important consideration for traffic flow prediction models. Machine learning algorithms adjust model parameters automatically based on the data, but often require users to set additional parameters, known as hyperparameters. Hyperparameters can significantly impact prediction accuracy. Traffic measurements, typically collected online by sensors, are serially correlated. Moreover, the data distribution may change gradually. A typical adaptation strategy is periodically re-tuning the model hyperparameters, at the cost of computational burden. In this work, we present an efficient and principled online hyperparameter learning algorithm for kernel-based traffic prediction models. In tests with real traffic measurement data, our approach requires as little as one-seventh of the computation time of other tuning methods, while achieving better or similar prediction accuracy.