# Ordinal Scale Traffic Congestion Classification with Multi-Modal Vision-Language and Motion Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10342 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10342/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [YOLO-World: Real-Time Open-Vocabulary Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17270/) (2024)
- [Towards Open Vocabulary Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15880/) (2023)
- [CORA: Adapting CLIP for Open-Vocabulary Detection with Region Prompting and Anchor Pre-Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13076/) (2023)
- [EdaDet: Open-Vocabulary Object Detection Using Early Dense Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01151/) (2023)
- [Smart Traffic Monitoring System using Computer Vision and Edge Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03141/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate traffic congestion classification is essential for intelligent transportation systems and real-time urban traffic management. This paper presents a multimodal framework combining open-vocabulary visual-language reasoning (CLIP), object detection (YOLO-World), and motion analysis via MOG2-based background subtraction. The system predicts congestion levels on an ordinal scale from 1 (free flow) to 5 (severe congestion), enabling semantically aligned and temporally consistent classification. To enhance interpretability, we incorporate motion-based confidence weighting and generate annotated visual outputs. Experimental results show the model achieves 76.7 percent accuracy, an F1 score of 0.752, and a Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK) of 0.684, significantly outperforming unimodal baselines. These results demonstrate the framework's effectiveness in preserving ordinal structure and leveraging visual-language and motion modalities. Future enhancements include incorporating vehicle sizing and refined density metrics.