An IoT approach for context-aware smart traffic management using ontology

Abstract

This paper exhibits a novel context-aware service framework for IoT based Smart Traffic Management using ontology to regulate smooth traffic flow in smart cities by analyzing real-time traffic environment. The proposed approach makes smarter use of transport networks to achieve objectives related to performance of transport system. This requires efficient traffic planning measures which relate to the actions designed to adjust the demand and capacity of the network in time and space by use of IoT technologies. The adoption of sensors and IoT devices in Smart Traffic System helps to capture the user's preferences and context information which can be in the form of travel time, weather conditions or real-life driving patterns. We have employed multimedia ontology to derive higher level descriptions of traffic conditions and vehicles from perceptual observation of traffic information which provides important grounds for our proposed IoT framework. The multimedia ontology encoded in Multimedia Web Ontology Language(MOWL) helps to define classes, properties, and structure of a possible traffic environment to provide insights across the transportation network. MOWL supports Dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN) to deal with time-series data and uncertainties linked with context observations which fits the definition of an intelligent IoT system. Thus, our proposed smart traffic framework aggregates information corresponding to traffic domain such as traffic videos captured using CCTV cameras and allows automatic prediction of dynamically changing situations which helps to make traffic authorities more responsive. We have illustrated use of our approach by utilizing contextual information, to assess real-time congestion situation on roads thus allowing to visualize planning services. Once the congestion situation is predicted, alternate congestion free routes which are in accordance with the coveted criteria are suggested that can be propagated through text-messages or e-mails to the users.