Teresa Galvão

State of the Art and Future Perspectives for Smart Support Services for Public Transport

This paper summarizes existing systems and research on information transport services, and proposes a hypothetic scenario for future travellers using public transport. Increased distributed intelligence in pervasive mobile smart devices and in sensor networks in public transport vehicles is enabling a new approach for enhancing the experience of public transport customers. Such environment could be modelled through a distributed multi-agent service system. This paper presents advanced information services already available on such environments, in particular the MOVE-ME smartphone application, and indicates a possible service environment where people’s feedback may benefit all transport service stakeholders. Mobile computing and crowdsourcing are key enablers for enhancing user experience in the transport services, and also for enhancing overall public transport services. Better experience leads to increased usage of shared mobility modes, and therefore to more sustainable cities in the future. Concerns about data security, and anonymity of travellers will need to be adequately addressed in the future scenarios presented.

Using Social Networks for Exchanging Valuable Real Time Public Transport Information among Travellers

Public transport users are increasingly connected in real time through mobile devices to social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. This allows them both to access and to provide valuable operational and emotional information from and to fellow travellers. Transport network management could benefit from this exchange, and also participate by providing rewards to valuable contributors. This paper introduces a model for such cooperative exchanges of information and proposes a valuation system for the information provided and obtained. Users and automatic systems (sensors) would provide information, such as punctuality, noise levels, and assessments of drivers skills, referenced to particular vehicles, routes and times. Then other users accessing such information would classify it on the level of correctness and usefulness, under a validation scheme operated by the transport network management. Such information could either be openly available or private in some degree within a social network, taking account of security aspects that need to be preserved. In a mature environment, more valuable information could only be made available via subscription or freely available to highly valued contributing users. The use of social networks would provide an easy way of sharing information and also provide a sense of community to the involved travellers. Transport network management benefiting from relevant information exchanges could reward users contributing with valuable data, as an incentive to enhance participation. In this context, the information exchanged would achieve a real transactional value and present a new electronic commerce paradigm. Overall, such exchange could also be seen as a serious game.

Time Automaton: A visual mechanism for temporal querying

Available visual temporal querying tools do not provide the means for formulating complex temporal queries. For these queries users have to adopt text-based querying languages, such as SQL. The problem, however, is that using text-based languages is less comfortable than using visual tools and, most important, in some cases temporal queries can be extremely difficult to formulate for users that do not possess programming competences. In this paper we propose the Time Automaton, a highly flexible visual mechanism that enables the formulation of a large set of different types of temporal queries, ranging from the simple to the most complex ones. To prove its practical application we created a tool that implements the mechanism and used it to analyze a real dataset. Time Automaton was validated against a representative sample of temporal queries extracted from the matured OWL-Time Ontology. In order to understand if users, with or without programming competences, could understand and use the Time Automaton we conducted a usability experiment.

Exploring Ticketing Approaches Using Mobile Technologies: QR Codes, NFC and BLE

There is a growing interest in integrating public transportation with the smartphone and mobile ticketing provides just that. To do so, different technologies can be used, such as Near Field Communication, Quick Response Codes and Bluetooth Low Energy. This paper explores the possibility of implementing a mobile ticketing solution, with focus on the ticket validation process, using these technologies. They are analyzed and compared at different levels and two possible approaches proposed. Both solutions are presented in terms of infrastructure and maintenance cost, as well as passenger interaction and benefit. The feasibility and performance of the technologies is analyzed and presented in the context of the proposed approaches. As a result, a mobile ticketing solution can be implemented using different technologies, and their choice depends on factors such as the available funds, the intended interaction level, performance and the size of the target audience.

How to support the design and development of interactive pervasive environments

In recent years, the significant advancements in miniaturised computing and pervasive communication networks have paved the way for ubiquitous computing environments. In such environments users interact with systems through novel and implicit methods. In this context, affective computing provides a dimension of interaction, raising a number of opportunities to address not only utilitarian but also hedonic needs. At the same time, a number of challenges arise beyond the technical aspects, that are related to the individual and other societal implications. A review of the main opportunities and challenges is presented, supporting the identification of the main requirements for the design and development of systems in interactive pervasive environments, focusing on an affective loop of interaction. A framework is proposed, identifying main modules and functionality alongside a methodology to instantiate in specific domains of application.

An Integrated Approach for the Design of Demand Responsive Transportation Services

Providing quality public transportation can be extremely expensive when demand is low, variable and unpredictable. Demand Responsive Transportation (DRT) systems try to address these issues with routes and frequencies that may vary according to observed demand. The design and operation of DRTs involve multiple criteria and have a combinatorial nature that prevents the use of traditional optimization methods. We have developed an innovative Decision Support System (DSS) integrating simulation and optimization, to help design and operate DRT services, minimizing operating costs and maximizing the service quality. Experiments inspired in real problems have shown the potential of this DSS.

The railway blues: affective interaction for personalised transport experiences

The convergence of personal devices, pervasive communication networks and remote computing has caused a fundamental shift in the user interaction paradigm. Multiple methods have enabled an implicit loop of interaction that goes beyond the traditional graphical interfaces. Human emotion is one of such dimensions, supporting the development of empathic systems. Thus, quality of user experience, a subjective measure, may be defined as the resulting affective state from an interaction, which can be dynamically assessed. In mobile ubiquitous settings, leveraging this affective interaction for providing personalisation and immersive digital services has the potential to significantly impact user experience. This paper investigates the relationship between user affect and experience in the context of urban public transport.

Spider Maps for Location-Based Services Improvement

Location-Based Services(LBS) are information services which are available through mobile devices inside a mobile network and can take advantage of the location of the mobile device. With the majority of the world population living in urban areas and using complex transportation systems, they can be used to assist people to use the public transportation systems more effectively and efficiently. This research aims to contribute to the improvement of LBS through the use of a new kind of a schematic map, called spider map that brings together geographic information in particular in its central location, or hub, with a schematic information of the overall transport network originating in the hub, including for instance relevant stops and their locations. These maps present an innovative layout that includes context information relevant for the users. They can be used to increase LBS user satisfaction and therefore increase the intention to use Public Transportation Services.

How to Predict Journey Destination for Supporting Contextual Intelligent Information Services

The adoption of smart cards in urban public transport has fundamentally changed how transport providers manage and plan their networks. Traveller information services, in particular, have leveraged this contextual data for targeting passengers and providing relevant information. Thus, it becomes increasingly relevant for the next generation of services to obtain on-time contextual passenger information, to support the development of intelligent information services. In this paper an adaptation of the Top-K algorithm is proposed for predicting journey destination, applied to different scenarios in public transport. The performance and efficiency are analysed and compared to a decision tree classifier. Finally, the feasibility and potential of applying the proposed methods to large-scale systems in a real-world environment is discussed.

VUMO: Towards an ontology of urban mobility events for supporting semi-automatic visualization tools

This paper introduces VUMO, a visualization-oriented ontology that formalizes the knowledge about urban mobility events (e.g. ridership and travel intentions) and visualization techniques. It focuses on serving as a foundation for the development of semi-automatic visualization tools, while also facilitating the process of data integration. The ontology allows techniques to be characterized with human perception factors, so they can be considered when automatically inferring recommended techniques for a dataset. The ultimate goal is to benefit transportation decision makers and foster the development of semantically rich visualization techniques. We propose a structured visualization workflow based on VUMO, and apply it to the development of a prototype featuring real data extracted from a journey planner mobile application.