  This paper is concerned with highway traffic estimation using traffic sensing
data, in a Lagrangian-based modeling framework. We consider the
Lighthill-Whitham-Richards (LWR) model (Lighthill and Whitham, 1955; Richards,
1956) in Lagrangian-coordinates, and provide rigorous mathematical results
regarding the equivalence of viscosity solutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi
equations in Eulerian and Lagrangian coordinates. We derive closed-form
solutions to the Lagrangian-based Hamilton-Jacobi equation using the Lax-Hopf
formula (Daganzo, 2005; Aubin et al., 2008), and discuss issues of fusing
traffic data of various types into the Lagrangian-based H-J equation. A
numerical study of the Mobile Century field experiment (Herrera et al., 2009)
demonstrates the unique modeling features and insights provided by the
Lagrangian-based approach.

Analysis of PDEs