Statistics of extremes, traffic jams and natural disasters

Abstract

Analyzing probability distributions from water level time series and calculating the first passage time distributions gives the probability of firstly exceeding a given threshold corresponding to a flood or general disaster event. The method will be applied to the water level recordings of the Danube river from which since 100 years very accurate notes exist. The method is transferred to time series of traffic volumes interpreting traffic breakdowns as extreme events and opening a probabilistic interpretation of the capacity of a highway.