This document presents three visions for sustainable public transportation in the future created by MIT and Cisco for the cities of Amsterdam, Seoul, and San Francisco. The visions are set 5-10 years in the future and explore how technologies like ICT and social networking can enhance public transportation services to increase ridership. Specific scenarios presented for Amsterdam include a personalized bus that provides customized travel recommendations and coordinates pickups using real-time data and GPS.
CORSA: An Open Solution for Social Oriented Real-time Ride SharingGreenapps&web
Simone Bonarrigo, Vincenza Carchiolo, Alessandro Longheu, Mark Philips Loria, Michele Malgeri and Giuseppe Mangioni
The combination of the interest in environmental questions on one hand and the massive use of web based social networks on the other recently led to a revival of carpooling. In particular, the exploitation of social networks promotes the information spreading for an effective service (e.g. reducing the lack of confidence among users) and endorses carpooling companies via viral marketing, finally acting as a basis for trust based users recommendation system In this work we outline CORSA, an open source solution for a real time ride sharing (RTRS) carpooling service that endorses the role of social networks by using them as a conveying scenario for the virtual credits reward mechanism CORSA is based on.
The Connected Bus: Connected and Sustainable Mobility PilotShane Mitchell
Pilot Results Paper - The Connected Bus is a proof of concept in the city of San Francisco that can be referenced by other cities and scaled around the globe.
The vision for The Connected Bus is to develop a smart transportation system that enhances the customer experience when using public transportation. The pilot was designed to provide passengers with real-time information and to streamline transportation-management operations and deliver capabilities and services that address the reduction of carbon emissions and operational costs.
A CAR POOLING MODEL WITH CMGV AND CMGNV STOCHASTIC VEHICLE TRAVEL TIMESEditor IJMTER
Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing, lift-sharing), is the sharing of car journeys so
that more than one person travels in a car. It helps to resolve a variety of problems that continue to
plague urban areas, ranging from energy demands and traffic congestion to environmental pollution.
Most of the existing method used stochastic disturbances arising from variations in vehicle travel
times for carpooling. However it doesn’t deal with the unmet demand with uncertain demand of the
vehicle for car pooling. To deal with this the proposed system uses Chance constrained
formulation/Programming (CCP) approach of the problem with stochastic demand and travel time
parameters, under mild assumptions on the distribution of stochastic parameters; and relates it with a
robust optimization approach. Since real problem sizes can be large, it could be difficult to find
optimal solutions within a reasonable period of time. Therefore solution algorithm using tabu
heuristic solution approach is developed to solve the model. Therefore, we constructed a stochastic
carpooling model that considers the in- fluence of stochastic travel times. The model is formulated as
an integer multiple commodity network flow problem. Since real problem sizes can be large, it could
be difficult to find optimal solutions within a reasonable period of time.
CORSA: An Open Solution for Social Oriented Real-time Ride SharingGreenapps&web
Simone Bonarrigo, Vincenza Carchiolo, Alessandro Longheu, Mark Philips Loria, Michele Malgeri and Giuseppe Mangioni
The combination of the interest in environmental questions on one hand and the massive use of web based social networks on the other recently led to a revival of carpooling. In particular, the exploitation of social networks promotes the information spreading for an effective service (e.g. reducing the lack of confidence among users) and endorses carpooling companies via viral marketing, finally acting as a basis for trust based users recommendation system In this work we outline CORSA, an open source solution for a real time ride sharing (RTRS) carpooling service that endorses the role of social networks by using them as a conveying scenario for the virtual credits reward mechanism CORSA is based on.
The Connected Bus: Connected and Sustainable Mobility PilotShane Mitchell
Pilot Results Paper - The Connected Bus is a proof of concept in the city of San Francisco that can be referenced by other cities and scaled around the globe.
The vision for The Connected Bus is to develop a smart transportation system that enhances the customer experience when using public transportation. The pilot was designed to provide passengers with real-time information and to streamline transportation-management operations and deliver capabilities and services that address the reduction of carbon emissions and operational costs.
A CAR POOLING MODEL WITH CMGV AND CMGNV STOCHASTIC VEHICLE TRAVEL TIMESEditor IJMTER
Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing, lift-sharing), is the sharing of car journeys so
that more than one person travels in a car. It helps to resolve a variety of problems that continue to
plague urban areas, ranging from energy demands and traffic congestion to environmental pollution.
Most of the existing method used stochastic disturbances arising from variations in vehicle travel
times for carpooling. However it doesn’t deal with the unmet demand with uncertain demand of the
vehicle for car pooling. To deal with this the proposed system uses Chance constrained
formulation/Programming (CCP) approach of the problem with stochastic demand and travel time
parameters, under mild assumptions on the distribution of stochastic parameters; and relates it with a
robust optimization approach. Since real problem sizes can be large, it could be difficult to find
optimal solutions within a reasonable period of time. Therefore solution algorithm using tabu
heuristic solution approach is developed to solve the model. Therefore, we constructed a stochastic
carpooling model that considers the in- fluence of stochastic travel times. The model is formulated as
an integer multiple commodity network flow problem. Since real problem sizes can be large, it could
be difficult to find optimal solutions within a reasonable period of time.
A Distributed Optimized Approach based on the Multi Agent Concept for the Imp...CSCJournals
Thanks to the important and increasing growth of the carpooling phenomenon throughout the world, many researchers have particularly focused their efforts on this concept. Most of the existent systems present multiple drawbacks regarding automation, functionalities, accessibility, etc. Besides, only few researchers focused on real time carpooling concept without producing promising results. To address these gaps, we introduce a novel approach called DOMARTiC: a Distributed Optimized approach based on the Multi-Agent concept for the implementation of a Real Time Carpooling service. We particularly focus on the distributed and dynamic aspect not only within the geographical network’s representation but also regarding the used automatic tools and the implementing algorithms. Adequate modeling on the base of which a distributed architecture is set up has been adopted helping to perform decentralized parallel process. This helped to take into consideration different aspects we should be involved in, especially the optimization issue as users\' requests must be performed in a reasonable runtime. Responses provided to users should also be efficient with regards to the fixed optimization criteria.
Urban co-creation by Nexthamburg: the "Bremen on the move" (Bremen bewegen) p...Elena Mozgovaya
Presentation of Nexthamburg and one of its projects - Bremen on the move - on the Informed cities forum in Rotterdam, 26.03.2015 (http://informed-cities.iclei-europe.org/)
Optimal content downloading in vehicular network with density measurementZac Darcy
The existence of Internet-connected navigation and infotainment systems is becoming a truth that will easily lead to a remarkable growth in bandwidth demand by in-vehicle users. In Examples the applications of vehicular communication proliferate, and range from the updating of road maps to the repossession of nearby points of interest, downloading of touristic information and multimedia files. This content downloading system will induce the vehicular user to use the resource to the same extent as today’s mobile customers. By this approach communication-enabled vehicles are paying attention in downloading different contents from Internet-based servers. We summarize the performance limits of such a vehicular multimedia content downloading system by modeling the content downloading process as an effective problem and developing the overall system throughput with density measurement. Results highlight the methods where the Roadside infrastructure i.e., access points are working at different capabilities irrespective of vehicle density, the vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
Presented by Eric Ziering, Director of Software, Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
Google Transit and the widespread adoption of the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) has had a huge impact on the availability of Transit routing and scheduling services and information,
both from Google and third parties such as HopStop.com. The effect has been to provide
the public with high-quality information services (well beyond what was imaginable a decade
ago) while lowering the cost to transit agencies. In his presentation, Mr. Ziering will tie together a
number of transit-related information systems projects that are now in progress or have recently
been completed by Cambridge Systematics that illustrate this theme of cost-effectiveness through
the innovative use of information technology. Together, these projects showcase the potential to
maximize the effectiveness of existing transit agency resources through innovative use of information systems.
Implementing a Role Based Mutual Assistance Community with Semantic Service D...Vincenzo De Florio
The population of elderly people is increasing rapidly, which
becomes a predominant aspect of our society. For several reasons
so significant a share of the human society is simply regarded as
“retired” – a word condemning the elderly to a reduced
participation in all active life, regardless of their actual
conditions and abilities. In previous work, we discussed how
community resources can be organized in a better way. In
particular we introduced a so-called mutual assistance
community – a digital ecosystem that removes any predefined
and artificial distinction between care-givers and care-takers and
provides a service-oriented infrastructure for intelligent matching
of the supply and demand of services. According to this new
paradigm all people are potentially active participants to
activities defined by the people’s current needs, abilities,
locations, and availabilities. Moving from this conceptual view to
practical implementation calls for an architecture able to match
adequately demand and supply of services. This paper presents
an implementation of such an architecture based on semantic
service description and matching. In comparison with our
previous implementation, main added values include a greater
flexibility in service representation and service matching and
considerable improvements in performance.
TTI’s Connected and Automated Vision for the Future
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) shares an industry vision where no vehicles collide and people can use connected and automated transportation to transform how they live, work and interact with their environment. To achieve this vision, research, development and testing are needed on how vehicles, users and transportation infrastructure all work together. While automated vehicles are emerging and connected vehicle research is progressing, TTI believes the most significant gains in safety and mobility will occur at the nexus of these areas. TTI is creating a world-class research environment on the Texas A&M University campus where researchers can collaborate, new transportation paradigms can be created, and future mobility and safety can be showcased.
The Gap Between the Public Transport System and the Automobile Industry Rory Van Wyk
https://www.miway.co.za/blog/useful-info/a-commentary-on-south-africa-s-dependence-on-the-motor-car-industry | We discuss the fundamental gaps between the South African public transport system and automobile industry. Learn about the implications of a lacking public transport system and its effects on the automobile and motor vehicle insurance industries.
Bus Customer Information Systems: MTA ’s BusTime Pilot Program
Presented by Sunil Nair, Senior Director, Bus Customer Information Systems, MTA
MTA BusTime represents a big step forward in how the MTA delivers technology to its customers.
Join MTA’s Sunil Nair for a discussion on the MTA’s new pilot project, currently in operation on the B63 route in Brooklyn. The program uses Global Positioning System (GPS) hardware and wireless
communications technology to track the real-time location of buses. Sunil will explain how the MTA developed the system, which allows riders to find the real-time location of buses that will arriveat their stop, and is accessible via a desktop web map, a mobile web site on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or other smartphones, and via SMS on all mobile phones.
Broadband infrastructures leverage a multiplicity of technology solutions in terms both of transport and of access. Technology choices definitely influence the strategic direction of broadband government programs, but this book focuses on strategic and organizational issues and does not discuss technology solutions, architectures and trends.
A Distributed Optimized Approach based on the Multi Agent Concept for the Imp...CSCJournals
Thanks to the important and increasing growth of the carpooling phenomenon throughout the world, many researchers have particularly focused their efforts on this concept. Most of the existent systems present multiple drawbacks regarding automation, functionalities, accessibility, etc. Besides, only few researchers focused on real time carpooling concept without producing promising results. To address these gaps, we introduce a novel approach called DOMARTiC: a Distributed Optimized approach based on the Multi-Agent concept for the implementation of a Real Time Carpooling service. We particularly focus on the distributed and dynamic aspect not only within the geographical network’s representation but also regarding the used automatic tools and the implementing algorithms. Adequate modeling on the base of which a distributed architecture is set up has been adopted helping to perform decentralized parallel process. This helped to take into consideration different aspects we should be involved in, especially the optimization issue as users\' requests must be performed in a reasonable runtime. Responses provided to users should also be efficient with regards to the fixed optimization criteria.
Urban co-creation by Nexthamburg: the "Bremen on the move" (Bremen bewegen) p...Elena Mozgovaya
Presentation of Nexthamburg and one of its projects - Bremen on the move - on the Informed cities forum in Rotterdam, 26.03.2015 (http://informed-cities.iclei-europe.org/)
Optimal content downloading in vehicular network with density measurementZac Darcy
The existence of Internet-connected navigation and infotainment systems is becoming a truth that will easily lead to a remarkable growth in bandwidth demand by in-vehicle users. In Examples the applications of vehicular communication proliferate, and range from the updating of road maps to the repossession of nearby points of interest, downloading of touristic information and multimedia files. This content downloading system will induce the vehicular user to use the resource to the same extent as today’s mobile customers. By this approach communication-enabled vehicles are paying attention in downloading different contents from Internet-based servers. We summarize the performance limits of such a vehicular multimedia content downloading system by modeling the content downloading process as an effective problem and developing the overall system throughput with density measurement. Results highlight the methods where the Roadside infrastructure i.e., access points are working at different capabilities irrespective of vehicle density, the vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
Presented by Eric Ziering, Director of Software, Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
Google Transit and the widespread adoption of the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) has had a huge impact on the availability of Transit routing and scheduling services and information,
both from Google and third parties such as HopStop.com. The effect has been to provide
the public with high-quality information services (well beyond what was imaginable a decade
ago) while lowering the cost to transit agencies. In his presentation, Mr. Ziering will tie together a
number of transit-related information systems projects that are now in progress or have recently
been completed by Cambridge Systematics that illustrate this theme of cost-effectiveness through
the innovative use of information technology. Together, these projects showcase the potential to
maximize the effectiveness of existing transit agency resources through innovative use of information systems.
Implementing a Role Based Mutual Assistance Community with Semantic Service D...Vincenzo De Florio
The population of elderly people is increasing rapidly, which
becomes a predominant aspect of our society. For several reasons
so significant a share of the human society is simply regarded as
“retired” – a word condemning the elderly to a reduced
participation in all active life, regardless of their actual
conditions and abilities. In previous work, we discussed how
community resources can be organized in a better way. In
particular we introduced a so-called mutual assistance
community – a digital ecosystem that removes any predefined
and artificial distinction between care-givers and care-takers and
provides a service-oriented infrastructure for intelligent matching
of the supply and demand of services. According to this new
paradigm all people are potentially active participants to
activities defined by the people’s current needs, abilities,
locations, and availabilities. Moving from this conceptual view to
practical implementation calls for an architecture able to match
adequately demand and supply of services. This paper presents
an implementation of such an architecture based on semantic
service description and matching. In comparison with our
previous implementation, main added values include a greater
flexibility in service representation and service matching and
considerable improvements in performance.
TTI’s Connected and Automated Vision for the Future
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) shares an industry vision where no vehicles collide and people can use connected and automated transportation to transform how they live, work and interact with their environment. To achieve this vision, research, development and testing are needed on how vehicles, users and transportation infrastructure all work together. While automated vehicles are emerging and connected vehicle research is progressing, TTI believes the most significant gains in safety and mobility will occur at the nexus of these areas. TTI is creating a world-class research environment on the Texas A&M University campus where researchers can collaborate, new transportation paradigms can be created, and future mobility and safety can be showcased.
The Gap Between the Public Transport System and the Automobile Industry Rory Van Wyk
https://www.miway.co.za/blog/useful-info/a-commentary-on-south-africa-s-dependence-on-the-motor-car-industry | We discuss the fundamental gaps between the South African public transport system and automobile industry. Learn about the implications of a lacking public transport system and its effects on the automobile and motor vehicle insurance industries.
Bus Customer Information Systems: MTA ’s BusTime Pilot Program
Presented by Sunil Nair, Senior Director, Bus Customer Information Systems, MTA
MTA BusTime represents a big step forward in how the MTA delivers technology to its customers.
Join MTA’s Sunil Nair for a discussion on the MTA’s new pilot project, currently in operation on the B63 route in Brooklyn. The program uses Global Positioning System (GPS) hardware and wireless
communications technology to track the real-time location of buses. Sunil will explain how the MTA developed the system, which allows riders to find the real-time location of buses that will arriveat their stop, and is accessible via a desktop web map, a mobile web site on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or other smartphones, and via SMS on all mobile phones.
Broadband infrastructures leverage a multiplicity of technology solutions in terms both of transport and of access. Technology choices definitely influence the strategic direction of broadband government programs, but this book focuses on strategic and organizational issues and does not discuss technology solutions, architectures and trends.
Connected and Sustainable Energy WhitepaperShane Mitchell
Cities around the world are realizing that energy consumed by buildings and homes is the leading cause of global-warming emissions. This paper presents an overview of emerging solutions for city leaders to reduce electricity consumption, produce greener energy with lower carbon emissions, and improve the reliability of the electric grid.
The Connected Republic, and the Power of Social NetworksShane Mitchell
So how does the phenomenon of social networking
affect governments?
In this paper, we look at the increasing role that technology-enabled social networks are playing in three areas: government as enterprise, government
as service provider, and government as policymaker.
Connected and Sustainable Mobility WhitepaperShane Mitchell
Urban mobility problems are rapidly turning into an urban mobility crisis.
ICT offers enormous capabilities, but most are vastly underutilized in urban transportation.
Public- and private-sector organizations must partner in adopting a vision for the sustainable city of the future where transportation continues to play a key role in enabling mobility—yet is dramatically transformed by innovative ICT.
The ideas explored in Connected Cities chart the emergence of a political and economic phenomenon-the city as the new connected republic of the 21st Century. Simon Willis, Global Head of eGovernment for the Internet Business Solutions Group at Cisco Systems, has collated essays that show how different cities, at the cutting edge of the process, are grappling with the various stages of connectivity.
Data science courses in Germany 3.pptx12samaylearnco
In today's congested cities, urban transportation is a serious issue. The main causes of the traffic bottlenecks that hinder our daily journeys are overcrowding, emissions, and incompetence. However, data science is a promising new light on the horizon. However, amidst this chaos, a quiet revolution is underway – one fueled by data science. Explore how aspiring professionals can embark on this journey through data science courses in the country. Unlocking Productivity with Data-Driven Understanding
A centre for city simulation www.its.leeds.ac.uk/virtuocity
Cities are entering a new age where new technologies could dramatically change the way people move. New insight is required to understand how we will react to these new mobility options. The University of Leeds is developing a new centre of excellence, focused on engaging with the public to co-design and demonstrate new mobility options, and to gather feedback and build interest and user-acceptance. It brings together expertise from a number of our major research facilities – including the University of Leeds Driving Simulator and Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.
Review Paper on Intelligent Traffic Control system using Computer Vision for ...JANAK TRIVEDI
In today scenario city will try to modify in the form of smart city with better facilities in terms of education, social-economic life,
better transportation availability, noise free – Eco-friendly environment availability, and ICT- Information and communication technology
enabler for development in the city. In this paper, we are reviewing different work already done or draft by some research in the field of traffic
control system – for better monitoring, tracking and managing using a computer vision system. Nowadays, most of the city installed with
C.C.T.V. – camera for monitoring the traffic related activity.
Technical article reproduced with permission from Transportation Professional - the magazine of the Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation
www.ciht.org.uk/en/knowledge/publications/transportation-professional/index.cfm
Public Transportation transformation for “The New Norm”Vinod Bijlani
Innovation goals in Public Transportation have transformed radically in the wake of Covid-19. In this write-up, I will be focusing primarily on artificial intelligence (AI) and internet-of-things (IoT) developments for rail transit systems, or trains, which form the transportation backbone of nearly every major city around the world.
Quantified Self movement allows to collect a lot of
personal data which can be used to nurture the model
of the users. Evenly, when aggregated, these personal
data become a picture of the people of a space in a City
Model. This model can be fed also by data coming from
crowdsensing. The resulting City Model can be used to
provide personalized services to citizen, and to increase
people awareness about their behaviour that can help
in promoting collective behavioural change. The paper
Procurement stage reviewStudent needs to identify a project proc.docxstilliegeorgiana
Procurement stage review
Student needs to identify a project procurement stage, process, or critical success factor as his/her topic for the term project. The topic should be used for all three submissions. A list of potential topics include the following.
· Plan, Specification and Estimate (PS&E)
Student is required to select one topic and perform a comprehensive review. A good review paper is expected to be 7000-9000 words plus figures and tables. A student can either conduct an in-depth review of 3-5 journal papers with calculation and analysis or a broad general review of more than 15 articles on a specific topic.
Optimizing Public Transport Schedules to Minimize Energy Use and Wait Times
Public transport system plays an important role in any city to travel through it seamlessly with reduced individual effort and it also improves several other factors like congestion and the environment. The authorities of the public transport company must strive to improve policymaking by using tools to attain effective utilization of energy while increasing their capabilities of serving more individuals. E-participation is one of the categories that can be used to collect feedback and improve the schedules by simply enabling a click of the button for a more suitable schedule by everyone. For instance, by enabling a new option to “choose my schedule” can be included in the already existing “Ventra App” in Chicago to group the individuals and have a definitive schedule that would serve the maximum people and eliminating the less effective schedules thereby minimizing energy use.
Coming to the passenger wait times, again e-participation can be an effective tool wherein an app that runs on web 2.0 and is build using android/ iOS can be used to record the arrivals of the passengers and align the schedules. Also, the opinion mining tools like RapidMiner can be used to collect the opinions of the users and classify them based on their intents/ opinions on the currents timings and then modifying the policies to reduce the wait times. These tools can collect data from all the variety of sources and then use machine learning approaches to derive an optimized schedule that improves the efficiency and thereby reducing the wait times.
Importance of tools in policymaking
In an organization, the development of the business always lies with the implementation of some techniques in the system that is actually related to making the policy in the system. The technologies that are seen to be used in the system certainly have some importance when defining the process in the system and identifying the process during the time of communication-related to the information is always important for making the policy. The techniques that are seen to be used by the organization in the system certainly have some important steps to follow during the time of developing a policy in the system (Furlan, Torresan, Ronco, Critto, Breil, Kontogianni & Marcomini, 20 ...
Smart Proximity: Annotating the Proximity of Entities In A Smart City OntologyCSCJournals
The smart city concept contributes a new research area that will continue to be the focus of research for a long time. Different works have modelled and presented ontologies for smart cities, especially for data integration processes. In this context, obtaining a model in which the full functionalities of a DL reasoner are employed to generate new knowledge that would be available to the different devices in a smart city. This information can represent a useful picture of the environment around transports, hubs and people, enabling the smart devices in a city to make decisions according to this environment. We present a model of a smart city ontology with different axioms for generating new knowledge from available knowledge using a DL reasoner. This model considers the location and state of proximity between two entities in the environment. To implement our approach, we develop a tool referred to as smart proximity for generating and querying our smart city ontology. We expect the generated knowledge to be useful to many single working devices, especially devices that are available to transportation, and improve several functionalities such as motion, stop, waiting time and connections between two different means of transport.
User experience evaluation for a bus tracking apps in smart campus initiativejournalBEEI
Satisfying user experience (UX) is one of the major goals for any application. A good UX will contribute to the higher rate adoption of the application itself. With the emergence of IoT, the concept of smart campus is widely being researched and developed. Smart campus initiative is relatively important as the campus can be considered as a small town by utilizing the same IT infrastructure as smart city. Bus tracking system is one of the initiatives in smart campus environment. One of the main issues is to assess the usability of this apps before it can be deployed widely in campus. This paper will discuss the user experiences evaluation using MeCUE technique on UMS HopIn! a bus tracking apps an initiative towards implementation of smart campus in Universiti Malaysia Sabah. The app gives user the real time location of campus buses and the estimated time of arrival (ETA) for each of the buses. Based on user evaluation it has been found that the application has meet within the expectation with most of the requirements has been fulfilled and the good of UX rating. Thus, the same approach can be applied to support the development of any future smart campus initiative.
The increasing need for traffic detection system has become a vital area in both developing and developed
countries. However, it is more important to get the accurate and valuable data to give the better result
about traffic condition. For this reason, this paper proposes an approach of tracking traffic data as cheap
as possible in terms of communication, computation and energy efficient ways by using mobile phone
network. This system gives the information of which vehicles are running on which location and how much
speed for the Traffic Detection System. The GPS sensor of mobile device will be mainly utilized to guess a
user’s transportation mode, then it integrates cloud environment to enhance the limitation of mobile device,
such as storage, energy and computing power. This system includes three main components: Client
Interface, Server process and Cloud Storage. Some tasks are carried out on the Client. Therefore, it greatly
reduces the bottleneck situation on Server side in efficient way. Most of tasks are executed on the Server
and history data are stored on the Cloud Storage. Moreover, the paper mainly uses the distance based
clustering algorithm in grouping mobile devices on the same bus to get the accurate data.
Submitted Publication in the Transportation Research Record
November 23, 2015
ABSTRACT
A pilot program in Austin, Texas, tested the practicality of integrating a real-time ridesharing application with a toll operator to process toll discounts for carpools. The toll discounts appeared on monthly toll transaction statements. The program lasted for almost a year on the 183A Toll Road and the US 290 Manor Expressway. Travelers used a smartphone application to track, record, and submit their trips for discounts. Two-person carpools that used the application received a 50 percent discount, and carpools of three or more people could travel toll-free. The program was a partnership between the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, the local toll systems operator, and a private ridesharing vendor. Back-office processes matched trip data from the smartphone application to transactions recorded by the toll systems. A total of 95 unique drivers were provided toll rebates for 2,213 trips during the 10.5-month pilot period. Most trips during the pilot program were rebated for two-person carpools. Individual driver behavior varied considerably. A select few drivers had a high number of carpool trips, while others took a sporadic or infrequent trip. Drivers took a median of 7 trips during the pilot. Future rideshare programs should consider showing higher-dollar rebates that represent annual savings to incentivize behavior. Timely feedback was found to be an important factor for success. Additionally, program sponsors should provide positive customer service and engage users when problems exist that are not under their direct purview.
Tackling Tomorrow's Traffic Challenges Today: Strategies for a Sustainable Fu...ganeshdukare428
Tackling tomorrow's traffic challenges requires proactive strategies that prioritize sustainability, efficiency, and equity. Here are some key strategies for creating a sustainable future in traffic management market :
Invest in Public Transit: Prioritize investments in public transit infrastructure, including expanding service coverage, improving frequency and reliability, and enhancing accessibility for all residents. Public transit provides an environmentally friendly alternative to private vehicle usage and helps reduce congestion on roadways.
Promote Active Transportation: Encourage walking and cycling as viable modes of transportation by investing in infrastructure such as bike lanes, pedestrian pathways, and safe crossing points. Promoting active transportation not only reduces traffic congestion but also promotes public health and reduces carbon emissions.
Similar to Sustainable Transportation Whitepaper (20)
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a button
Sustainable Transportation Whitepaper
1. White Paper on Sustainable Transportation
MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Connected Urban Development
Design Laboratory
School of Architecture and Planning
2. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Authors
Federico Casalegno, Dave Chiu
Introduction
The following three visions of sustainable public transportation were created by the MIT Mobile
Experience Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with Cisco Systems, Inc.
and the cities of Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Seoul, South Korea; and San Francisco, California.
Set five to ten years in the future, each scenario explores a variety of technologies and user
experiences appropriate for the specific city, with the common goal of increasing public
transportation use by enhancing services and making public transportation more attractive.
These scenarios were originally presented at the Connected Urban Development Conference in
San Francisco in February 2008.
Sustainable Public Transportation
The main criteria for the Connected Urban Development project is to improve the sustainability of
public transportation. While primarily focused on providing environmental benefits, the MIT Mobile
Experience Lab was also interested in improving social and economic factors within sustainable
public transportation. The Lab’s approach encompassed two primary conditions: Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) and social networking.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
While the nature of the Lab’s partnership with Cisco immediately lent itself to seeking innovative,
environmentally sustainable concepts utilizing ICT, the Mobile Experience Lab was also very
interested in transforming the experience of using ICT solutions towards emphasizing a more
human approach. By focusing on the social characteristics of ICT (such as empathy and
personalization, as well as interaction and social networking), the Lab aims to make these already
technically efficient and empowering solutions more attractive to users. Only by encouraging the
adoption of these technologies can we begin to realize the large-scale environmental benefits that
they promise to produce. After all, the most elegant solution is useless if nobody uses it!
Social Networking
Encouraging adoption of new ICT-based solutions can be accomplished by making the solution
attractive, but social networks provide another significant motivator for adoption. These social
networks can be existing, real-world networks such as families or coworkers, or ad-hoc virtual
networks, such as online communities. Both types of social networks can be leveraged to achieve
a common goal of sustaining participation and encouraging behavior change in participants.
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3. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Companies might encourage their employees to take public transportation or work remotely,
collecting their employees’ aggregated scores as the company’s overall rating, which could then be
compared to a rival company’s score. Fostering competition between virtual and real-world social
networks can encourage increased rates of adoption and motivation for continued participation.
However, leveraging these social networks is about more than simply reducing commute travel
time or improving efficiency; initiatives which utilize social networks need to consider the
experience as a fundamental component to their success or failure. For example, telecommuting
may improve the quality of life for employees by reducing their commute, but one side effect of
such an arrangement is that employees who often work from home are more likely to be passed
over for a promotion compared to employees who are in the office every day. Social mores may be
one factor in such a situation (the employee who comes to work may appear to be more
dedicated), but technology such as video-conferencing or telepresence can help to alleviate some
of these symptoms by making it easier to relate to remote workers. Instead of appearing as simply
an email address, facilities such as telepresence enable remote workers to attend meetings as
active participants in life-size circumstances.
Background
As part of this project’s development process, the MIT Mobile Experience Lab ran a semseter-long
project with a class of students comprising a broad cross-section of MIT and Harvard, including the
MIT Sloan School of Business, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the MIT Department of
Architecture and Planning. This interdisciplinary approach to the project brought a wealth of unique
insights grounded in each student’s particular background, experience, and research focus.
The Lab’s partnership with Cisco Systems naturally led to a focus on the impact of ICT and
networking technology on sustainable public transportation in particular, as well as its role in the
broader issue of environmental sustainability. While the production of electronic products has a
negative impact on environmental sustainability, the use of ICT has a potential for reversing this
trend by, for example, improving the quality of remote communications and thereby reducing the
need for business travel.
Additionally, each city had its own unique vision of the future and immediate needs. One of the
challenges of this project for the Lab was to reconcile the long-term vision of the proposals with the
pragmatic, near-term needs of the cities. Desk research helped to define the current state-of-the-
art within each city, and the scenarios aimed to build upon each city’s existing infrastructure and
exploit planned technology implementations.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 3 of 18
4. Amsterdam: The Personalized Public Bus
In the coming years, Amsterdam is expecting significant population growth in Almere, a nearby
suburb. Infrastructure constraints along the route from Almere to Amsterdam mean that future
capacity for private cars is very limited, particularly during commute hours. Our goal was to
propose concepts which make public transportation an attractive, convincing alternative to private
cars. Our target audience was commuters, with a technology- and trends-timeline of ten years in
the future that also recognizes the ongoing development of a high speed, open fiber network in
Almere.
The Amsterdam scenarios propose a number of innovations, each of which is described in more
detail below: real-time travel planning, the majordomo bus, the open source bus, the personalized
bus, and the customized bus.
Real-time Travel Planning
Two key elements to travel planning are to
provide information that is easily accessible and
easily digestible. Content can be delivered
throughout the home using a variety of
channels, such as embedded displays in
furniture or ambient cues using lighting or
sound. Along with news feeds, calendars, and
agendas, transit information is given equal
emphasis as part of the user’s routine. Some of
the elements taken into consideration include
updates on bus reservations, traffic reports,
scheduled construction, city events, weather
conditions, and other factors which might impact
a commute.
These factors are distilled into a set of commute recommendations by a personal travel assistant.
While the user always has the option of drilling deeper into specific data sets, the default view
provides a set of options that are tailored to the specific circumstances of the user. The options can
be presented and ranked according to specific criteria, such as departure time or projected arrival
time, making it easier for the user to quickly assess his or her options and make a decision.
The recommendations made by the personal travel assistant factor in personal preferences
(commute duration, route, departure time) and real-time commute data (road conditions, weather,
current capacity). The user can then select or modify a recommendation based on additional
criteria such as the number of passengers projected to be on board, or to catch a bus with a friend.
Over time, the personal travel assistant can learn a user’s habits and preferences, and
automatically integrate them into its recommendations.
5. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Once the user selects a commute route and confirms his or her reservation, the system uses GPS
on the bus and the user’s mobile phone to coordinate boarding. Based on the location of the user
and the bus, the system designates an ad-hoc pickup point where the bus and user arrive
simultaneously. As both the bus and the user travel to the pickup point, they receive updates from
the system about each others’ progress. If either party encounters a delay, the system can
dynamically re-allocate resources and direct the user to another pickup point, or arrange for
another bus to make the pickup at a later time.
Strong optimization software powers both the travel recommendation system and the routing
system, accounting for various factors within the system, including individual destinations and rate
of travel, service pickup and delivery points, overall transit system status, and environmental
factors such as weather or pollution. Data is gathered from a variety of governmental and private-
party sources, and is combined with personal preferences of passengers to produce customized,
highly relevant travel recommendations. Real-time updates boost rider confidence, as does the
system’s ability to recover from unexpected disruptions and coordinate alternate transit solutions.
Majordomo Bus
The majordomo bus acts on behalf of its riders to
coordinate services which make their lives more
efficient and convenient. Passengers can use a
specialized service area on the bus to drop off
mail and packages, deposit or collect dry
cleaning, or pick up food or beverages. While
promoting the bus as a centralized point for
service delivery, this arrangement also helps to
reduce the number of individual trips that
passengers would normally need to make.
For example, riders can drop off their dry
cleaning on the bus in the morning and arrange to pick it up on their bus in the evening. The bus
acts as an aggregator of dry cleaning, ultimately coordinating a handoff of laundry with a partnering
dry cleaning service. When ready for pickup, the bus system can act as a distribution network, with
a bus picking up a load of dry cleaning that consists partly of deliveries for its passengers and
partly of bulk deliveries for other buses. These bulk deliveries are left at way-stations for pickup by
specific buses which then distribute the deliveries amongst their riders. Key to this service is
coordinating buses with both passengers and deliveries so that they end up on the same bus.
The same type of system can accommodate the delivery of food, beverages, and other services.
Passengers can make purchases in advance or while riding the bus, with the bus aggregating
orders, collecting payments, and coordinating pickup from a partner service (e.g.: Starbucks),
possibly in conjunction with picking up another passenger.
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6. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Payment for these services, as well as fare collection, is handled using Near Field Communication
(NFC) or other contact-less payment systems, either as the payment mechanism or as an
authentication method that enables electronic transactions. For example, a passenger would need
to use their NFC-enabled phone to claim their dry cleaning from the lockers on the bus. Payment
could be processed using the phone or by debiting an electronic account, but the physical
presence of the NFC-based authentication adds a level of security to the transaction. As
technology improves, contact-less payment systems could be replaced by multi-factor biometric
authentication.
Open Source Bus
By providing an open platform for user participation
and discussion, the Open Source Bus enables
passengers to provide feedback to the bus system,
interact with contextually-relevant content, engage
in peer-to-peer discussions, and actively
reconfigure the design of a bus to suit their
particular needs.
By proactively soliciting feedback and suggestions
from riders, the transit system can more effectively
respond to everyday passenger needs. Feedback
might include comments on service delivery or
alerts about infrastructure issues such as potholes
or graffiti. Passengers can also use this platform to determine what types of services are enabled
and delivered through the bus system. By using crowd-sourcing to evolve its services, the system
can ultimately deliver highly-relevant, high-quality services which address the specific needs of the
community. This platform also enables the transit system to deliver service advisories and system
information, and to propose and receive feedback on service changes.
The open source bus also allows passengers to communicate on a peer-to-peer (P2P) level, such
as leaving messages for each other; real-time,
bus-to-bus communication; or sharing ratings
for local businesses. These ratings can be
displayed in real-time as the bus passes the
location, enabling opportunities for pushing
place-sensitive information and location-specific
advertising to passengers. Passengers could
apply filters to this information, for example,
choosing to be alerted whenever the bus
passes a vegetarian restaurant with four or
more stars. The format for displaying this
information would normally be in a text-only
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 6 of 18
7. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
format, but retailers could perhaps pay to include more colorful graphics or descriptions.
By open-sourcing the design of the bus interior, passengers can contribute towards the creation of
customized buses which provide distinct environments and promote specific kinds of activity.
Similar to “quiet cars” found on trains today, where mobile phone usage is limited, customized
buses are optimized for particular uses, such as business meetings, networking, families, sports
clubs, or activities.
A bus customized for business meetings would have an interior dedicated for this purpose (tables,
network connections, telepresence facilities, etc.), just as a bus customized for families would have
playpens and seating for various heights, or a sports bus might be customized with the team’s
livery and wide-screen TVs to watch the big game on the way home.
To promote the Work Bus, employers might offer employees time credits as incentives. Work done
during the commute on the bus would thus count towards the overall work day. The combination of
commute credits and productive working environments can help alleviate overall traffic congestion
by encouraging commuters to stagger their departure times in the morning and evenings.
Personalized Bus
Next-generation internet routing technology in
the form of IPv6 enables “internet everywhere”,
where any object can access (and be accessed
through) the internet, enabling smart devices
which can load personal profiles stored on the
network. These profiles can include
specifications for physical objects, such as
adjusting the height or pitch of a seat, or for
populating screens with information, such as
filling a public screen with a personal
workspace.
Passengers can identify themselves to objects
on the bus using contact-less technology such as NFC or RFID (Radio Frequency Identification).
These objects can then reference the passenger’s personal profile stored on the network and
adapt their functionality accordingly: seats can adjust their height, the ventilation system can adjust
the temperature in your zone, or your agenda can be brought up on the embedded window display
next to your seat.
The Personalized Bus can also note your interests and social networks, and highlight particular
businesses or services which might appeal to you or that your friends have recommended. As the
bus travels through the city, it can scan for and alert you to vegetarian restaurants which have
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8. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
received ratings higher than four stars. Or highlight restaurants which your friends have recently
visited and rated positively.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 8 of 18
9. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
San Francisco: Connected Transportation
Our goal for San Francisco was to promote public transportation as an everyday mobility option,
particularly for the elderly. We were also interested in exploring
how to connect people with the city, with public transportation, and
with each other. Our timeline was five years in the future, and our
particular use-case dealt with an elderly woman traveling from her
home to the hospital for a checkup and prescription refill.
The Passport
As a central part of the scenario, we developed the Passport
application to deliver a number of different transit and lifestyle
functionalities. This application runs on either a dedicated device
or a generic mobile device, and delivers the following features and
functionalities, which are described in detail below: personalized
route planning, the green gauge, wearable urbanism, location-
based social networking, personalized interaction with city services, and dynamic, intelligent traffic
management.
The Passport application helps to make public transit an attractive choice for enabling everyday
activities by providing an integrated payment system and easy-to-access transit information. The
addition of GPS-based directions and personalized route planning, along with integration into
everyday routines helps provides an improved level of relevance and personalization
For example, the ability to get directions to her home no matter where she is in the city helps
alleviate Lucia's uncertainty surrounding the transit system, raising her confidence and increasing
her independence. More importantly, the system can securely integrate her doctor's exercise
recommendations into its transit options, for example, by increasing or decreasing walking
distances in its recommendations. Aligning user needs and goals with the transit system develops
public transportation as a platform for achieving those goals while contributing to improved
environmental conditions within the city.
Personalized Route Planning
The Passport application’s primary functionality is to connect the individual with the transit system.
It does so by providing real-time information about bus arrival times and system delays, and by
suggesting travel itineraries based on knowledge of the individual.
Based on the user’s current location, the Passport application can suggest several options,
calculating both the time it will take to walk to the bus stop and when the bus will arrive. The user
can then make a decision whether he or she will be able to make it to the stop in time to catch the
bus. These calculations take into account factors such as the overall system status, performance
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 9 of 18
10. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
along the particular bus line, the specific bus that will arrive, weather, traffic, city events, and
planned works.
In addition to providing customized travel advice, the Passport application can integrate personal
information into its calculations, such as health conditions or lifestyle goals set by the user or by
their doctor. Taking these factors into consideration, the system can alter its recommendations to
maximize or minimize walking, for example, in response to health conditions like diabetes or if the
user is temporarily disabled with a broken leg.
In response to other factors, such as air pollution statistics or even the position of the sun, the
system might recommend a reduced level of activity, or that you should walk on the shady side of
the street to reduce exposure to UV radiation. In the evenings, the system could recommend
routes which maximize streetlight exposure, or perhaps encourage taking an earlier bus which runs
a longer route instead of waiting on the street for a bus running a later, more direct route.
Green Gauge
The Green Gauge acts as a kind of city health monitor and is located both inside and on the sides
of buses. As a bus drives through the different
districts of the city, it collects historical information
(such as electricity usage) and real-time
environmental data (the number of cars passed)
about each district. This information is aggregated
into a visualization that of colored bands which
enables viewers to quickly assess the overall
“health” of the city. Because buses drive different
routes every day, each bus develops a unique
pattern that helps shape the overall perception of
the city’s environmental performance.
The goal of the Green Gauge is to diffuse
awareness of the local environmental conditions
throughout the community. The external Green
Gauge enables members of the community to get a
rough sense of how their city and their neighborhood is doing, using each bus as a kind of
environmental thermometer or litmus paper. The interactive Green Gauge on the inside of the bus
allows passengers to engage with the data and explore specific districts in more detail by browsing
the bus’s route history and investigating specific data and trends.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 10 of 18
11. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Wearable Urbanism
The Passport application promotes a form of wearable urbanism, completely connecting the person
with various services within the city, enabling more efficient service delivery and fostering
collaboration between people and city services.
Wearable urbanism expands the current
boundaries of service delivery past the physical
environment. For example, patients can begin the
hospital check-in process while still on the bus.
When they arrive at the waiting room, they can
proceed through an express checkin process,
reducing their waiting time and improving service
delivery. After their checkup, patients can opt to
receive an update from the pharmacy when their
prescription has been filled, freeing them to use
their time more efficiently than if they had been
waiting at the hospital.
By connecting passengers with city services on a
more personalized basis, the Passport application
enables direct communication and collaboration between people and city services. Users can alert
the city to hazardous conditions within the system, provide demographic information which helps
shape service delivery, and encourage the development of specific services and functionality within
the bus system based on specific user needs.
Location-based Social Networking
Integrating location-based social networking into
the transit system, enables the system to alert
riders to friends on nearby buses and
throughout the wider transportation network.
Access to this kind of coincidence information
provides a unique social aspect to public
transportation. Passengers waiting at a bus stop
can either seek or avoid a ride with friends on
arriving buses, providing another criteria for
riders to use when deciding which bus to catch.
Social-networking information can also be used
as a platform for urban gaming and as a basis
for making place recommendations. For
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 11 of 18
12. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
example, as your bus passes a restaurant, you might receive a copy of a review written by a friend.
If the transit system were to provide an open API and encourage an “opt-in” culture for the social
networking component, external developers could harness the location information to provide users
with unique services and applications that the transit system itself might not develop on its own.
Personalized Interaction with City Services
Personalization of city services can take several forms. One option is to deliver trip and destination
information, maps, and other travel information in
multiple languages. Digital signage on a bus, for
example, could adapt its displayed content based
on language preferences stored in personal
profiles associated with passengers’ electronic
bus passes.
Another option is to enable passengers to directly
communicate with either the drivers or transit
representatives. Instead of a faceless system
providing status updates at a bus stop,
passengers can receive a personal update from
the transit representative monitoring the line.
Passengers can ask questions and interact with
the representative, fostering a more human
connection between passengers and service, and
helping to improve the overall perception of
public transportation.
Dynamic, Intelligent Traffic Management
In a city optimized for public transportation, buses may be given traffic-light priority through
intersections. This means that as buses
approach an intersection, the light will remain
green longer to allow the bus to pass through.
Giving traffic-light priority to buses helps to
reduce pollution from acceleration and
deceleration, provides passengers with a
smoother ride, and improves reliability of the bus
service.
If riders have access to real-time information
through their Passport applications and other
information outlets, the bus system gains
flexibility in its service delivery. For example, the
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 12 of 18
13. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
system can reroute a bus around an accident or construction and proactively alert passengers to
the change.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 13 of 18
14. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Seoul: Informed Mobility with Options
Because Seoul is so technologically advanced compared to most cities around the world, the
challenge facing the city is not in the collection of information but rather the delivery of it. While
Seoul already offers many public and private information services for public transportation
delivered over multiple channels (e.g.: SMS schedules), there is virtually no interoperability and no
consistency in delivery. Our goal was to explore ways of effectively delivering personally-relevant
information to people so they can make better transportation decisions. It is worth noting that
although our timeline was five years out, Seoul’s infrastructure enables very forward-looking
concepts.
The Smart Trip Advisor
The Smart Trip Advisor is a version of the Personal Travel Assistant which helps people and
passengers make informed travel decisions
based on factors such as price, environmental
impact, and time-to-destination. Specific trip
segments within an itinerary are analyzed and
presented with recommended transportation
modes, along with an analysis of environmental,
time, and financial impact. The user can match
his or her priorities (time, money, CO2) with the
options listed by the system, or make changes on
a more detailed, granular level.
By aggregating real-time and historical transit
information from a variety of public sources (the subway system) and private sources (private bus
lines), and personal information from an agenda (outlook calendar) or personal profile (accessibility
or transit mode preferences), the Smart Trip Advisor can proactively generate a complete overview
of a journey targeted towards a specific user. This journey overview incorporates a number of
decision points which alert the user to multimodal options which may speed their journey or help
reduce their environmental impact. For example, if traffic is predicted to be especially heavy
between meetings, the system may recommend that a user stop at a public telepresence facility
and hold her meeting remotely instead of holding the meeting in person.
Aggregate decisions made by a user with the Smart Trip Advisor can be represented through a
personal green calculator that helps the user understand their personal impact on the city. Each
option presented by the system can include environmental impact information which may influence
a user’s choices when creating a travel itinerary. Individual decisions made using the Smart Trip
Advisor are then placed in context of a larger personal budget or goal, providing a common
language with which to compare behavior with friends, family, and social networks at large.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 14 of 18
15. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
By connecting a personal accounting system with a rewards system, cities, corporations, and
institutions can provide incentives to users. A company like Samsung may sponsor an internal
contest that recognizes and rewards employees who take public transportation. Individual
employee performance can then be aggregated to produce an overall score for the company,
which can then be compared against other companies to create team-based competitions. While
such competition has immediate environmental benefit in the form of increased public
transportation use and decreased use of personal vehicles, the longer-term benefits of competition
include a persistent source of motivation for increased rates of adoption, and encouraging and
sustaining behavior change.
Predictive Advice
By comparing real-time conditions with historical performance under similar conditions, the system
can generate predictive recommendations for a
particular journey. These estimates can
incorporate data such as scheduled civic or
sporting events; street closures and
construction; accidents; environmental
information such as weather, pollution, or
seasonal variances; and current traffic volume.
Collecting this information over time provides a
foundation for the system to develop estimates
of transit behavior in similar real-time conditions.
These estimates may vary depending on the
time of day or the weather, and can assist in
decision-making when optimizing trip itineraries,
both for the current trip segment and for those later in the day. For example, the system might
suggest waiting a half hour in the afternoon to avoid the worst traffic. Or if the weather is nice, it
might recommend renting a bicycle to complete a journey.
Including statistics about particular aspects of travel (travel time, CO2 emissions, trip cost) helps
both the system and the user to optimize trip itineraries based on particular goals. The suggestion
to ride a bicycle in nice weather may be further influenced by the amount of CO2 saved over a
similar journey by car or bus.
The data used in these calculations is pulled from various sources utilizing a non-centralized
information architecture. In this system, on-time information about a bus does not come from a
data center but from the bus itself, or perhaps a router somewhere on the network.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page 15 of 18
16. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Smart Urban Furniture
Smart urban furniture is a platform that extends accessibility for digital content into public spaces,
creating a responsive city environment that
allows citizens to access information through
customized interfaces.
While a certain amount of transit information can
be consumed through mobile and handheld
devices, detailed planning with higher resolution
information will likely require a physically larger
screen and physical security measures to
protect personal privacy. This perspective
influenced the design of urban furniture in the
subway system which allows users to retrieve
their personal profiles from the network using a public access point. This access point enables a
user to begin planning a trip on a mobile device or laptop, and then seamlessly access the same
information through a high-resolution, public interface to complete detailed planning stages.
After approaching a screen embedded in the urban furniture, the user can use contactlessly log
into their personal space using their mobile device and draw on the multi-touch screen to define the
boundaries of their workspace. Directional sound, directional monitors, and sound cancelation
technology provide physical security, which prevents passersby from viewing screen contents or
overhearing conversations. Directional monitors enable the user to view content from a certain
angle, while anyone outside of that viewing angle will see alternate images, such as advertising.
Directional sound constrains audio to a specific zone, while sound cancellation can prevent
eavesdropping through obfuscation or complete cancellation. Cameras embedded in the display
can be used by users both for video conferencing and for monitoring personal space (for example,
to see if someone is lurking behind them).
The urban furniture incorporates multi-touch tables and a private telepresence facility which adds
an additional level of privacy for discussions. However, the physical design also provides a social
space encouraging congregation and relaxation for those not using the electronic portion of the
system.
Customized Maps
Map information delivered through platforms such as the smart urban furniture incorporates two
major concepts: personalization and customization.
Personalization means the system delivers information that is relevant to you. If you have a specific
destination in mind, the map can focus its information delivery on points which are relevant to you,
filtering out extraneous and potentially distracting or confusing information.
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17. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Customization means that the user has increased control over how the chosen information is
presented. This capability serves two purposes:
first, to represent information is a way that
makes sense, is attractive, or is most useful to
the user; the second, to enable personal
expression through map templates.
Because screen-based maps are capable of
changing their representation, it makes sense to
cater to user needs when displaying map
information. For example, the same map can be
displayed in different languages based on who
is viewing the map. Alternatively, a high-contrast
version could be displayed for users with
impaired vision.
Beyond the functional uses of customization lie more aesthetic goals. In the same way that
ringtones signal identity and can be traded within communities, map templates could be used to
encourage a culture of mapping that promotes two-way participation with transit data. Instead of
consuming information as presented by the city, anyone can create a template which highlights
different content or simply presents the same data in dramatically different styles.
Users could create personalized maps of the city which highlight stops based on the nice
restaurants in the general vicinity. Other users might create a stylized, manga version of the
subway map. This customization can be developed by individuals for their friends and social
networks, or can be promoted by industry. Advertisers may create whimsical maps which represent
the subway train as a hamburger, the stops as french fries, and the lines as ketchup, mustard, or
other condiments.
Customized maps may be unique to physical locations; to download a custom map, you would
need to visit the station which hosts that map template. This encourages exploration of the transit
system while maintaining a unique character for each station that is developed by the community
surrounding that station.
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18. MIT Mobile Experience Lab Connected Urban Development
Credits:
This White Paper on Connected Urban Development is part of a research project on Connected
Urban Development between MIT Mobile Experience Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and Cisco Systems, Inc.
MIT Mobile Experience Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Design Lab
School of Architecture and Planning
Federico Casalegno
Dave Chiu
Special thanks to William J. Mitchell for advice and guidance
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Internet Business Solutions Group
J.D. Stanley
Nicola Villa
Shane Mitchell
For more information about Connected Urban Development, please visit the following websites:
http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org/
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Internet Business Solutions Group
http://www.cisco.com/go/connectedurbandevelopment.org
MIT Mobile Experience Lab
http://mobile.mit.edu
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