Incorporating driving behavior into vehicle fuel consumption prediction: methodology development and testing

This study is a significant endeavor involving the development and testing of a comprehensive methodology to incorporate driving behavior into the analysis and prediction of vehicle fuel consumption. It underscores the crucial importance of understanding how different driving behavior affect fuel efficiency. The framework we present is a theoretical construct and a practical tool. It provides a robust, multi-step process for linking driving behavior to fuel consumption, leveraging both traditional statistical methods and advanced machine learning techniques to derive actionable insights. To test the framework, we used a naturalistic data that includes about 5408 different road users in a mixed traffic environment and urban settings in Germany. We applied a microscopic fuel consumption model to calibrate the framework and an unsupervised clustering algorithm to classify the behavior of the driver interacting with each other and with vulnerable road users. The framework includes developing Linear regression model as a baseline, which yields an R-squared of 0.511 and a Mean Squared Error (MSE) of 0.031, indicating moderate predictive accuracy. The final step includes choosing Random Forest as a better model, which achieves a higher R-squared of 0.956 and a lower MSE of 0.003. We also found that conservative and aggressive driving leads to significantly higher and more discrepancy in fuel consumption than normal driving behavior. These insights can promote more efficient driving practices, leading to significant fuel savings and environmental benefits.