A crowdsourcing platform for real-time public transport information

• Grant number: 15/50572-6
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Innovative Research in Small Business - PIPE
• Start date: October 01, 2016
• End date: September 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Agreement: FINEP - PIPE/PAPPE Grant
• Principal Investigator: Marcio Calixto Cabral
• Grantee: Marcio Calixto Cabral
• Company: Scipopulis Desenvolvimento e Análise de Dados Ltda
• City: São Paulo

Abstract

One of the biggest problems of the public transportation networks in large Latin American cities, and in the state of São Paulo particularly, is the lack of reliable information to passengers. Even basic information such as the lines that pass by a bus stop are mostly non-existent. Fleet tracking systems such as the one used by the city of São Paulo only solve part of the problem. Due to its high cost, it is only deployed on some parts of the network, those that are more important or more likely to present problems. Its own purpose is not to provide reliable information to passengers but to assist the Transport Authority to manage service providers and contracts. An alternative monitoring system with low cost, large capillarity and focused on passengers is needed to provide real-time information even to users far from downtown. Our goal on this project is to leverage the large number of smartphones already deployed throughout the city to get data about the public transportation network provided by the very passengers of the system. Passengers may provide these data passively, from sensors already present on smartphones (crowdsensing) but also actively from explicit user interactions (crowdsourcing). This type of monitoring system has a low implementation cost since it is based on smartphones that passengers already have, can cover distant parts of the city or anywhere where there are passengers using the network and, since data is provided by the passengers themselves, it can focus on how to effectively provide useful passenger information instead of using the data to other purposes. (AU)