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Quantum neural networks with data re-uploading for urban traffic time series forecasting

N. Schetakis, Paolo Bonfini, Negin Alisoltani, Konstantinos Blazakis, S. Tsintzos, Alexis Askitopoulos, D. Aghamalyan, P. Fafoutellis et al.

Scientific Reports, 2025

19 citations

Abstract

Accurate traffic forecasting plays a crucial role in modern Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), as it enables real-time traffic flow management, reduces congestion, and improves the overall efficiency of urban transportation networks. With the rise of Quantum Machine Learning (QML), it has emerged a new paradigm possessing the potential to enhance predictive capabilities beyond what classical machine learning models can achieve. In the present work we pursue a heuristic approach to explore the potential of QML, and focus on a specific transport issue. In particular, as a case study we investigate a traffic forecast task for a major urban area in Athens (Greece), for which we possess high-resolution data. In this endeavor we explore the application of Quantum Neural Networks (QNN), and, notably, we present the first application of quantum data re-uploading in the context of transport forecasting. This technique allows quantum models to better capture complex patterns, such as traffic dynamics, by repeatedly encoding classical data into a quantum state. Aside from providing a prediction model, we spend considerable effort in comparing the performance of our hybrid quantum-classical neural networks with classical deep learning approaches. We observe that, in fully connected network settings, hybrid quantum-classical models consistently underperform, with median scores approximately 10% worse than their purely classical counterparts across different configurations. In…

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