Abstract: A method and system for traffic performance analysis, network reconfiguration, and real-time traffic monitoring and surveillance is described. Traffic performance analysis and congestion detection is achieved through discrete event simulation. The road network is translated to a graph. The translation is the result of the processing of a high resolution satellite or aerial image consisting of road extraction. In the resulting graph, road intersections are represented by vertices and road sections by edges. Edges have several properties such as the capacity of the section, presence of traffic signs and traffic lights, rate of generation (vehicles leaving parking), and rate of absorption (vehicles going to parking) Temporal simulation allows detecting congestions as well as congestion propagation. Real-time traffic monitoring consists of detecting abnormal traffic slowdowns. This is achieved by observing traffic with a camera.