Dotan Emanuel
Dotan Emanuel works on the Audio biomarkers team in Google research, Tel-Aviv. Prior to this position Dotan managed the cloud network-telemetry and fault detection teams in Google cloud. Before joining Google Dotan held a leading technical position in a few Israeli startups; Genio (news personalization) which was acquired by Somoto, Discretix (mobile security) acquired by ARM, Telmap (mobile navigation) acquired by Intel, Appstream (early SaaS) & Comfy (games for young kids).
Dotan Emanuel received his B.SC and M.Sc in computer science from Tel aviv university 1997 and 2003 respectively, and holds an MBA from Recanati Graduate School of Business, TAU (2008).
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An Empirical Study of Time of Day Breakpoints in Traffic Light Plans
Eliav Buchnik
Tom Kalvari
Jack Haddad
Dan Karliner
Danny Veikherman
Shai Ferster
2025
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Fixed time strategy is a common approach in signal traffic control in which signal plans are simple and periodic, enjoying easy implementation without detection mechanisms. A traffic light is associated with several daily plans, each applied to several consecutive hours. Time-of-day breakpoints (TODs) refer to the times over the day in which the plan is changed. TODs are often selected based on traffic, aiming to divide the day into groups of consecutive hours with similar traffic characteristics within each group of hours. We present a methodology to study time-of-day breakpoints in practice. We use this methodology to estimate and analyze time-of-day breakpoints in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil based on traffic properties derived from traffic trajectories. Our study examines over 900 of the city intersections. We refer to properties such as the number of daily plans and the times by which plans start. We also provide traffic-aware insights on the potential improvement in the selection of TODs and identify key intersections where adjusting TODs could reduce average delay times. We identify potential improvements in over 8% of the examined intersections. These findings provide valuable insights for traffic engineers seeking to optimize signal timing.
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On the relationship of speed limit and CO2 emissions in urban traffic
Tamás Tettamanti
Balázs Varga
Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 32 (2025)
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The paper analyzes the relationship between urban speed limits and vehicle emissions. There is an ongoing trend of reducing speed limits from to for the sake of increasing road safety. However, the impact of this policy on emissions is still unclear. It can be mixed depending on the proportion of dynamic and steady-state driving. While cruising emissions are higher at lower speeds, lower speeds entail less acceleration in urban traffic. Based on our investigation, one network topology feature (road length) and two traffic-related parameters (traffic volume and turning ratio) have been suggested for analysis being the most relevant to affect vehicle emission. Their correlation with potential emission reduction was evaluated using high-fidelity traffic simulation based on traffic scenarios validated with real traffic data. Random forest regression was used to support the optimal selection of zones for speed limit reduction. Traffic simulations on large urban networks prove that emission reductions of over 10% can be achieved in the case of a well-chosen speed limit policy.
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Study of Arterials in the City of Rio de Janeiro for Traffic Coordination
Eliav Buchnik
Danny Veikherman
Dan Karliner
Tom Kalvari
Shai Ferster
Ron Tsibulsky
Jack Haddad
2025
Preview abstract
Urban traffic congestion is a growing challenge, and optimizing signal timing strategies is crucial for improving traffic flow and reducing emissions. The coordination of signalized intersections improves both traffic operations and environmental aspects. Coordination is particularly important along arterials, sequences of signalized intersections that serve as the primary routes and carry a high volume of traffic. In this paper we analyze real data from the city of Rio de Janeiro to study properties of arterials. We refer to their length, the distance between intersections and to the properties of the traffic light plans such as cycle time. We then study their in practice level of coordination in terms of number of stops and their common locations along the arterials. We dive into particular arterials and provide insights that can be useful for efficient design of arterials in additional cities. Based on the analysis, we show how simple traffic properties can indicate the potential upon coordinating two adjacent intersections as part of an arterial in improving traffic performance.
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Fine-grained Measurement of Vehicle Delay Fairness
Eliav Buchnik
Tom Kalvari
Jack Haddad
Dan Karliner
Danny Veikherman
Ron Tsibulsky
Shai Ferster
2025
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Optimizing signal timing in traffic lights helps to improve traffic flow and reduce emissions through reducing delays. At intersections, vehicles from different movements observe different delays impacted by the traffic light plan. This paper analyzes delay fairness among various vehicles at intersections. We refer to three cities: Rio de Janeiro, Hamburg and Seattle with a total number of over 5100 intersections. We present an intuitive methodology to compute delay fairness based on Gini index, a common fairness measure in economics. We evaluate the fairness based on real traffic data and provide insights on the relationship of fairness with day hours and traffic demand. We also examine real changes in traffic light plans that occurred in practice to check whether improving delay is often aligned with increasing fairness.
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Day-of-the-week Awareness in Time of Day Breakpoints for Traffic Light Plans
Eliav Buchnik
Shai Ferster
Tom Kalvari
Ron Tsibulsky
Danny Veikherman
Jack Haddad
2025
Preview abstract
Time-of-day breakpoints (TODs) refer to the times over the day in which the plan of a traffic light is changed. Traditionally, TODs are selected jointly for all weekdays (Monday-Friday), typically with additional TODs dedicated to weekends. In this paper, we present an alternative approach motivated by traffic characteristics that can differ among the weekdays Monday-Friday and consider TODs which are day-of-the-week aware. The traffic-aware approach studies similarities among days and computes TODs that can be shared among days with similar characteristics but can also have other forms for weekdays with unique characteristics. Based on traffic properties derived from anonymized trajectories, we apply the new methodology to compute time-of-day breakpoints that are day-of-the-week aware in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and estimate the impact of the new methodology.
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QUANTITATIVE APPROACH FOR COORDINATION, AT SCALE, OF SIGNALIZED 2 INTERSECTION PAIRS
Jack Haddad
Nitzan Tur
Danny Veikherman
Eliav Buchnik
Shai Ferster
Tom Kalvari
Dan Karliner
Omer Litov
2024
Preview abstract
The coordination of signalized intersections in urban cities improves both traffic operations and environmental aspects. Traffic signal coordination has a long history, where the impact of offset on delays and emissions at signalized intersections have been investigated through simulations and a limited number of experimental findings. Coordinating intersections is often justified by specific engineering requirements and judgment. However, as a consequence, many intersections in cities remain uncoordinated.
In this paper, we examine the potential benefits of coordinating signalized intersections at scale. Unlike previous studies, our analysis is based on aggregated anonymized probe data analysis and does not need to explicitly model traffic-oriented issues such as queue spillback and platoon dispersion. We follow a decentralized approach by considering intersection pairs, i.e. a system of two signalized intersections which can be spatially coupled, but have different cycle lengths. We introduce a new method for coordinating those signalized intersections. The method first evaluates the effect of different offsets on vehicle travel times and emissions. Then, it coordinates the two intersections by setting a common cycle and finding the optimal offset that minimizes emissions and travel times. We present the analysis for several case studies from real intersections at Jakarta, Rio de Janeiro, Kolkata, and Haifa. Finally, we evaluated our method by implementing it in a real experimental study at Jakarta. We collaborated with the city to implement the optimal offset that we had determined, and we compared the results before and after coordination.
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Estimating Daily Start Times of Periodic Traffic Light Plans from Traffic Trajectories
Eliav Buchnik
Tom Kalvari
Jack Haddad
Dan Karliner
Omer Litov
Danny Veikherman
Shai Ferster
Nitzan Tur
2024
Preview abstract
In recent years, the wealth of available vehicle location data from connected vehicles, cell phones, and navigation systems has been introduced. This data can be used to improve the existing transportation network in various ways. Among the most promising approaches is traffic light optimization. Traffic light optimization has the potential to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution and GHG emissions. The first step in such optimization is the understanding of the existing traffic light plans. Such plans are periodic but, in practice, often start every day at arbitrary times, making it hard to align traffic trajectories from various days toward the analysis of the plan. We provide an estimation model for estimating the daily start time of periodic plans of traffic lights. The study is inspired by real-world data provided, for instance, by navigation applications. We analyze the accuracy of such computations as a function of the characteristics of the sampled traffic and the length of the evaluated time period.
from the complete traffic and potential noise in the samples.
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Probe-Based Study of Traffic Variability for the Design of Traffic Light Plans
Eliav Buchnik
Shai Ferster
Tom Kalvari
Dan Karliner
Omer Litov
Nitzan Tur
Danny Veikherman
Jack Haddad
COMSNETS 2024, https://www.comsnets.org/ (2024)
Preview abstract
Computing efficient traffic signal plans is often based on the amount of traffic in an intersection, its distribution over the various intersection movements and hours as well as on performance metrics such as traffic delay. In their simple and typical form, plans are fixed in the same hour over weekdays. This allows low operation costs without the necessity for traffic detection and monitoring tools. A critical factor in the potential efficiency of such plans is the similarity of traffic patterns over the days along each of the intersection movements. In this paper, we study traffic variability and propose simple metrics to measure it based on traffic volume and traffic delay. We propose an automatic probe data-based method, for city-wide estimation of traffic variability. We discuss how such measures can be used for signal planning such as an indication of which intersections can benefit from dynamic but expensive traffic detection tools or in selecting plan resolution. Likewise, we discuss various methods to mitigate the impact of such variability. We demonstrate the framework based on real traffic statistics to study the traffic variability in the city of Haifa along its 162 intersections.
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Systematic Data Driven Detection of Unintentional Changes in Traffic Light Plans
Dan Karliner
Eliav Buchnik
Shai Ferster
Tom Kalvari
Omer Litov
Nitzan Tur
Danny Veikherman
Jack Haddad
2024
Preview abstract
Traffic light plans determine the time allocated to each movement within an intersection. The plan has a high impact on vehicle travel performance, such as on the average delay time or the probability of stopping at the intersection. Traffic engineers of a city control its traffic lights and can make changes in their plans to improve traffic performance. As it is not always easy to predict the impact of such transitions, they can also be detrimental. We present an experimental study of real transitions in traffic plans in 10 cities with a total of over 9900 intersections within a time period of over 40 days. We focus on changes in the cycle time of plans that have a major influence on performance metrics such as delay. We compare the overall impact of such transitions and dive into several of them through a careful analysis. Interestingly, we indicate that many of the changes result in higher delay. To the best of our knowledge, our study is one of the largest experimental studies of traffic conditions in recent years.
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Shared computational principles for language processing in humans and deep language models
Ariel Goldstein
Zaid Zada
Eliav Buchnik
Amy Price
Bobbi Aubrey
Samuel A. Nastase
Harshvardhan Gazula
Gina Choe
Aditi Rao
Catherine Kim
Colton Casto
Lora Fanda
Werner Doyle
Daniel Friedman
Patricia Dugan
Lucia Melloni
Roi Reichart
Sasha Devore
Adeen Flinker
Liat Hasenfratz
Omer Levy,
Kenneth A. Norman
Orrin Devinsky
Uri Hasson
Nature Neuroscience (2022)
Preview abstract
Departing from traditional linguistic models, advances in deep learning have resulted in a new type of predictive (autoregressive) deep language models (DLMs). Using a self-supervised next-word prediction task, these models generate appropriate linguistic responses in a given context. In the current study, nine participants listened to a 30-min podcast while their brain responses were recorded using electrocorticography (ECoG). We provide empirical evidence that the human brain and autoregressive DLMs share three fundamental computational principles as they process the same natural narrative: (1) both are engaged in continuous next-word prediction before word onset; (2) both match their pre-onset predictions to the incoming word to calculate post-onset surprise; (3) both rely on contextual embeddings to represent words in natural contexts. Together, our findings suggest that autoregressive DLMs provide a new and biologically feasible computational framework for studying the neural basis of language.
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