A system for stoppage pattern extraction from public bus GPS traces in developing regions

Abstract

Identification of Public Bus Stops and characterising their waiting time is of significance in the domain of Intelligent Transportation System and public interest. Surveys suggest that the existing systems and algorithms cannot be merely replicated in the context of developing regions, because of the kind of heterogeneity and chaotic situation prevalent in their transport system, in contrast to the orderly and much regulated system of the developed world. Moreover a significant fraction of population residing here is not so tech-savvy, hence crowd-sourced based strategies renders useless. Either novel algorithms/techniques are required or the existing ones have to undergo suitable adaptation and innovation to suit the contrasting characteristics of developing regions. Using customized hardware we present the analysis of public bus GPS traces of more than 1000 km for a 23 km route of Durgapur, a suburban city (West Bengal, India). We have revealed 53 Bus Stops with 2% false positive along with their waiting time distribution using a density based spatio-temporal clustering algorithm.