Project
AA3-9
Information Design for Bayesian Networks
Project Heads
Max Klimm
Project Members
Svenja Griesbach
Project Duration
01.10.2021 − 30.09.2024
Located at
TU Berlin
Description
It is a well-known fact that selfish behavior degrades the performance of traffic networks. A popular model to study these effects is the traffic model of Wardrop. Here, the road network is modeled as a directed graph where each edge of the graph corresponds to a road segment. The travel times in the graph are modeled as cost functions on the edges where the cost of an edge is a function of the total flow on that edge.
In this project, we study a generalization of the model where the travel time of each edge also depends to a state of the world θ∈Θ that is unknown to the traffic participants. However, the traffic participants share a common belief regarding the state of the world. In real-world traffic networks, the state θ may model certain weather or traffic scenarios. We put ourselves in the shoes of a benevolent mediator who knowns the true state of the world before any flow is routed. In practice, this corresponds to a traffic service provider before the rush hour.
The mediator may now strategically reveal information about the state of the world regarding the true state of the world in order to induce a good traffic equilibrium, i.e., an equilibrium with a low overall travel time. It is interesting to note that in order to obtain a good equilibrium it may be beneficial for the system designer to not reveal the full information about the state of the world. Instead, it may be good to only partially reveal the knowledge in order to have more control on the user behavior.
In this project, we study the mathematical problem of computing the optimal information structures that induce best-possible equilibria in these settings.
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