An Information System for Bus Travelling and Performance Evaluation

A wide vehicular network has a huge potential to collect city-data, specially with respect to city mobility, one of the top concerns of the municipalities. In this work, we propose the use of the mobility data generated by the movement of the connected buses to deliver a new set of tools to support both the bus passengers and bus fleet operator use cases. Considering the bus passengers, it is possible to build smart schedules, which deliver an estimated time of arrival based on the city dynamics along time, and that can be accessed directly in the smartphone. Considering the bus fleet operator, it is possible to characterize the behaviour of buses and bus lines. Using the GPS trace of buses and map-matching algorithm, we are able to discover the line each bus is assigned to. Estimated times of arrival and predictions are implemented recurring to time estimations and predictions, using both data mining and machine learning approaches. Proof-of-concept applications were implemented to demonstrate the real-life applicability, including a mobile app for the citizens, and a web dashboard for the fleet operator.