Analysing Traffic Flow and Traffic Hotspots from Historic and Real-Time GPS Data

Abstract

Traffic congestion is an increasing issue in many road networks. Considering the Maltese Islands, the traffic situation is in bad condition, despite the different attempts by the government to find a solution for this problem. In this report, we investigate how traffic may be analysed, which methods are available for this analysis, and how the traffic flow can be depicted. Many methods for this analysis are presented with a customized method attempted for finding traffic congestions and checking the traffic flow around the towns. The solution implemented in this work enables users to provide data through a data collecting Android app, which displays traffic flow on an interactive map, while allowing the users to view the traffic flow on a web-based interactive map at their chosen town, date and time. The method works by analysing GPS data from vehicles attained from different methods of data collection, namely data collection from Android devices, and historic GPS data from tracking devices installed in commercial fleets. The results of this work demonstrate a method for analysing traffic flow with accurate results, a usable and easy method of depicting traffic, with positive user feedback.