Boris Kerner

Boris S. Kerner (born 1947) is the pioneer of three phase traffic theory.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Boris S. Kerner
Boris S. Kerner, 2018
Born	(1947-12-22)December 22, 1947 Moscow
Citizenship	German
Education	electronic engineer,
Alma mater	Moscow Technical University MIREA
Known for	three phase traffic theory
Awards	Daimler Research Award 1994
Scientific career
Fields	non-linear physics, traffic and transportation science
Institutions	Pulsar and Orion Companies (Moscow) (1972–1992) Daimler Company (Germany) (1992–2013) University Duisburg-Essen (2013–now)
Theses	Ph.D. in physics and mathematics (1979) Sc.D. (Doctor of Sciences) in physics and mathematics (1986)

Life and work

Boris S. Kerner is an engineer and physicist. He was born in Moscow, Soviet Union in 1947 and graduated from the Moscow Technical University MIREA in 1972. Boris Kerner was received Ph.D. and Sc.D. (Doctor of Sciences) degrees in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, respectively, in 1979 and 1986. Between 1972 and 1992, his major interests include the physics of semiconductors, plasma and solid state physics. During this time, Boris Kerner together with V.V. Osipov developed a theory of Autosolitons - solitary intrinsic states, which form in a broad class of physical, chemical and biological dissipative systems.

After emigration from Russia to Germany in 1992, Boris Kerner worked for the Daimler company in Stuttgart. His major interest since then was the understanding of vehicular traffic. Empirical spatiotemporal features of traffic breakdown at highway bottlenecks understood by Boris Kerner are the basis for Kerner's three phase traffic theory, which he introduced and developed in 1996–2002.

In Kerner's three phase traffic theory, in addition to the free flow traffic phase (F), there are two traffic phases in congested traffic: the synchronized flow traffic phase (S) and the wide moving jam phase. One of the main results of Kerner's theory is that traffic breakdown at a highway bottleneck is a random (probabilistic) phase transition from free flow to synchronized flow (F → S transition) that occurs in a metastable state of free flow at a highway bottleneck. The prediction of the Kerner’s three-phase theory is that this metastability of free flow with respect to the F → S phase transition is governed by the nucleation nature of an instability of synchronized flow with respect to the growth of a large enough local increase in speed in synchronized flow (called a S → F instability). The S → F instability is a growing speed wave of a local increase in speed in synchronized flow at the bottleneck. The development of the S → F instability leads to a local phase transition from synchronized flow to free flow at the bottleneck (S → F transition). The basic result of Kerner's theory about the nucleation nature of traffic breakdown (F → S transition) at a bottleneck shows the incommensurability of three-phase traffic theory with all earlier traffic flow theories. The term "incommensurability" has been introduced by Kuhn in his classical book^[7] to explain a paradigm shift in a scientific field.

Kerner's three phase traffic theory is a theoretical basis for some applications in transportation engineering, like ASDA/FOTO methods that are used in on-line applications for spatiotemporal reconstruction of congested traffic patterns in highway networks as well as Kerner’s breakdown minimization principle that is devoted to control and optimization of traffic and transportation networks. An application of the breakdown minimization principle called "network throughput maximization approach" maximizes the network throughput while keeping free flow conditions in the whole network.

In 2011-2014, Boris Kerner has expanded three phase traffic theory, which he developed initially for highway traffic, for the description of city traffic. It turns out that like traffic breakdown at highway bottlenecks, traffic breakdown at traffic signals is also a random phase transition that occurs in metastable under-saturated city traffic. This theory of traffic breakdown at traffic signals can explain the physics of traffic gridlock in city traffic as well as the breakdown of green wave that is often observed in real city traffic. Moreover, like empirical studies of highway traffic, recent empirical studies of over-saturated city traffic prove the existence of empirical synchronized flow in city traffic.

Between 2000 and 2013 Boris Kerner was a head of a scientific research field Traffic at the Daimler company. In 2011 Boris Kerner was awarded with the degree Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. After his retirement from the Daimler company on January 31, 2013, Prof. Kerner works at the University Duisburg-Essen.

Publications

• B.S. Kerner, V.V. Osipov, Autosolitons: A New Approach to Problems of Self-Organization and Turbulence (Fundamental Theories of Physics), Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1994
• Boris S. Kerner, The Physics of Traffic: Empirical Freeway Pattern Features, Engineering Applications, and Theory, Springer, Berlin, New York 2004
• Boris S. Kerner, Introduction to Modern Traffic Flow Theory and Control: The Long Road to Three-Phase Traffic Theory, Springer, Berlin, New York 2009
• Boris S. Kerner, Breakdown in Traffic Networks: Fundamentals of Transportation Science, Springer, Berlin, New York 2017
• Boris S. Kerner, "Optimum principle for a vehicular traffic network: minimum probability of congestion", J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 44, 092001 (2011). doi:10.1088/1751-8113/44/9/092001
• Boris S. Kerner, "Physics of traffic gridlock in a city", Phys. Rev. E 84, 045102(R) (2011). doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.84.045102
• Boris S. Kerner, "The physics of green-wave breakdown in a city " Europhysics Letters 102, 28010 (2013). doi:10.1209/0295-5075/102/28010
• Boris S. Kerner, "Criticism of generally accepted fundamentals and methodologies of traffic and transportation theory: A brief review", Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 392, 5261–5282 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.physa.2013.06.004
• Boris S. Kerner, "Microscopic theory of traffic-flow instability governing traffic breakdown at highway bottlenecks: Growing wave of increase in speed in synchronized flow", Phys. Rev. E, 92, 062827 (2015)
• Boris S. Kerner, "The maximization of the network throughput ensuring free flow conditions in traffic and transportation networks: Breakdown minimization (BM) principle versus Wardrop’s equilibria", Eur. Phys. B J., 89, 199 (2016)
• Boris S. Kerner, "Failure of classical traffic flow theories: Stochastic highway capacity and automatic driving", Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 450, 700–747 (2016). doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2016.01.034
• Boris S. Kerner, "Breakdown minimization principle versus Wardrop's equilibria for dynamic traffic assignment and control in traffic and transportation networks: A critical mini-review", Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 466, 626-662 (2017)
• Boris S. Kerner, "Three-phase theory of city traffic: Moving synchronized flow patterns in under-saturated city traffic at signals", Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 397, 76–110 (2014). doi:10.1016/j.physa.2013.11.009
• Boris S. Kerner, Peter Hemmerle, Micha Koller, Gerhard Hermanns, Sergey L. Klenov, Hubert Rehborn, and Michael Schreckenberg, "Empirical synchronized flow in oversaturated city traffic" Phys. Rev. E 90, 032810 (2014). doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.90.032810
• Boris S. Kerner, Sergey L. Klenov, and Michael Schreckenberg, "Probabilistic physical characteristics of phase transitions at highway bottlenecks: Incommensurability of three-phase and two-phase traffic-flow theories" Phys. Rev. E 89, 052807 (2014). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.89.052807
• Boris S. Kerner, "Physics of automated driving in framework of three-phase traffic theory" Phys. Rev. E, 97, 042303 (2018)

See also

• Three-phase traffic theory
• Traffic congestion: Reconstruction with Kerner’s three-phase theory
• Kerner’s breakdown minimization principle

References

• Gao, K., Jiang, R., Hu, S-X., Wang, B-H. & Wu, Q. S., "Cellular-automaton model with velocity adaptation in the framework of Kerner's three-phase traffic theory" Phys. Rev. E 76,026105 (2007)
• H. Rehborn, S. Klenov, "Traffic Prediction of Congested Patterns", In: R. Meyers (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, Springer New York, 2009, pp. 9500–9536
• H. Rehborn, J. Palmer, "Using ASDA and FOTO to generate RDS/TMC traffic messages", Traffic Engineering and Control, July 2008, pp. 261–266.
• L. C. Davis, A review on the book by B. S. Kerner, "Introduction to Modern Traffic Flow Theory and Control" in Physics Today, Vol. 63, Issue 3 (2010), p. 53.

Notes