A real-time bus arrival time information system using crowdsourced smartphone data: a novel framework and simulation experiments

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a novel framework for developing a real-time bus arrival time information system, using crowdsourced bus information contributed by bus passengers. On the one hand, passengers can derive the real-time information via their smartphones. On the other hand, they can provide some bus data in return. Particular characteristics of the participatory-based bus data are introduced. Also, a number of data processing steps are proposed in the framework to handle the data characteristics, which pose extra difficulties in real-time bus arrival time prediction. The proposed system is evaluated using simulated bus data sets. Practicality of the system is investigated in terms of prediction accuracy based on different participation percentages of bus passengers.

KEYWORDS:

• Bus arrival time prediction
• real-time system
• participatory-based bus data
• crowdsourced data
• smartphone application

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was jointly supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Project No. PolyU 152628/16E], the Research Committee of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Project Nos. 4-ZZFY and 1-ZVFJ], and the Innovation Fund Denmark for the project “Integrated Public Transport Optimization and Planning” (IPTOP).