Using GPS-Enabled Cell Phones for Traffic-Flow Data Collection

摘要

Researchers have made significant progress in using Global Position Satellite (GPS) receivers and probe vehicles to accumulate data regarding traffic flow and other traffic information. However, two significant challenges exist: instrumenting large numbers of vehicles with GPS systems, and overcoming the fact that placing additional probe vehicles on the road negatively impacts the very traffic flow we are trying to measure. Cell-phone technology can change this situation — with the inclusion of GPS receivers and downloadable applications, cell phones that are already in vehicles can report location and speed data with minimal costs and without affecting the traffic flow we are trying to measure. We have divided the problem of measuring traffic flow into five processes: location and speed determination, data-reporting algorithms and protocols, data aggregation and processing, reporting traffic-flow conditions in near real time, and long-term storage for post-collection analysis. We describe our overall approach to GPS data collection using cell phones, and we also describe the framework that supports the investigation of each of our five processes.