Information Propagation for informing Special Population Subgroups about New Ground Transportation Services at Airports

摘要

Implementing new transportation services for servicing only a special population subgroup presents a severe problem on transport operation process because one has to separate them from the common users and provide them specific transit services under the quality and cost restrictions. A significant counterpart of this problem is the definition of the time lag required, between the initial marketing campaign and the starting time of the service itself. Informing the potential users by mass media may lead to misuse of monies with doubtful results especially in the case of handicapped people. This population group is, on one hand scattered within the population, but on the other hand has special communication habits and the use of "word of mouth" constitutes an efficient information process. The viability of a project dealing with services for these special population subgroups mainly depends upon the number of people aware of a particular service, and the required time for the information dissemination within the population studied. This paper discusses a modeling approach based on Markov stochastic process to simulate the person-to-person information dissemination process. Application of this model focuses on the elderly and handicapped subpopulation group and takes into account the communication behaviors and habits of three separate subgroups to estimate the required time to be informed, prior to the commencement of the service.