United States Department of Transportation
i
Crowdsourcing Real-Time Traveler Information Services: Issues, Challenges and Recommendations
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2016-01-11
[PDF-701.14 KB]
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TRIS Online Accession Number:01594421
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:Traditional solutions to traveler information services rely on fixed sensor networks (in the form of loop detectors, and traffic detection cameras), augmented with reports about planned and unplanned network perturbations to provide real-time traveler information services (RTIS). The information provided by RTIS is often limited in its coverage because of high cost of installing sensors across entire networks. Further, data are often delayed owing to limitations of communication and transmission technologies, and sensor network unreliability leads to a lack of information provision. Additionally, physical sensor networks are prohibitively expensive to maintain and operate. Recent advances, however, in information and communication technologies – in the form of smartphones and portable handheld devices – combined with participatory paradigms of information sharing, such as crowdsourcing, offer the ability to overcome challenges associated with traditional information provision solutions that rely on physical sensor networks. In this new wave of traveler information services, consumers with location-aware and data-enabled devices serve as a network of mobile sensors providing information about prevailing network conditions. This approach of traveler information has potentially wider coverage, almost real-time currency, and redundancy in data collection due to the participatory paradigm of information sharing. Additionally, since the end users serve as sensors, there is little investment involved in deploying the sensor network and minimal cost is incurred in maintaining and operating the information services. Despite the potential of crowdsourced based RTIS solutions, a number of issues abound about its feasibility and applicability to provide complete traveler information about entire transportation networks across all modal alternatives. To this end, researchers have developed a prototype of a RTIS solution called RETTINA to assess and evaluate the feasibility of providing real-time traveler information based on crowdsourced data. In the next section, an overview of the RETTINA prototype is presented. In the last section, some ongoing and future work is described.
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