An approach to creation of smart space-based trip planning service

Trip planning is among important and complex problems in tourism industry. Trip plan preparation requires data analyzing from a substantial number of services. Usually, service or standalone application provides limited functionality, which can be used only in trip preparation and for basic scenarios. This paper provides an approach to creating Smart Space-based Trip planning service. The Smart Space technology allows to create proactive services with context-based scenarios and multi-service usage. The paper describes trip planning problem as a list of possible tasks and presents mathematical model for common task. The presented approach includes high-level architecture of Smart Spacebased service, scenarios usage and possible data sources from existing third party services and used algorithms for data transformation

The Northern Arc: The Outer Perimeter Reincarnated?

Plans for the proposed Outer Perimeter were scaled back after the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and State Implementation Plan (SIP) lapsed in 1998 due to non-compliance with national clean air standards. In place of the 200-mile circumferential route, a dramatically modified Northern Arc emerged as an alternative in the revised alternative of the Regional Transportation Plan released in the Spring of 1999 by the Atlanta Regional Commission. In the Summer of 1999 the State Department of Transportation held a series of Public Hearings on the proposed 59 mile route extending from I-75 in the Cartersville area eastward to I-85 and GA Route 316 in the Lawrenceville area. Without advocating a position on the project, this paper examines several issues requiring resolution prior to action for or against its ultimate construction.Research Atlanta released a report in 1993 discussing issues for consideration in the public debate on the highway's fate. The current report lends some updated perspective on these issues and the text of the original report is contained in an appendix

Program your city: Designing an urban integrated open data API

Cities accumulate and distribute vast sets of digital information. Many decision-making and planning processes in councils, local governments and organisations are based on both real-time and historical data. Until recently, only a small, carefully selected subset of this information has been released to the public – usually for specific purposes (e.g. train timetables, release of planning application through websites to name just a few). This situation is however changing rapidly. Regulatory frameworks, such as the Freedom of Information Legislation in the US, the UK, the European Union and many other countries guarantee public access to data held by the state. One of the results of this legislation and changing attitudes towards open data has been the widespread release of public information as part of recent Government 2.0 initiatives. This includes the creation of public data catalogues such as data.gov.au (U.S.), data.gov.uk (U.K.), data.gov.au (Australia) at federal government levels, and datasf.org (San Francisco) and data.london.gov.uk (London) at municipal levels. The release of this data has opened up the possibility of a wide range of future applications and services which are now the subject of intensified research efforts. Previous research endeavours have explored the creation of specialised tools to aid decision-making by urban citizens, councils and other stakeholders (Calabrese, Kloeckl & Ratti, 2008; Paulos, Honicky & Hooker, 2009). While these initiatives represent an important step towards open data, they too often result in mere collections of data repositories. Proprietary database formats and the lack of an open application programming interface (API) limit the full potential achievable by allowing these data sets to be cross-queried. Our research, presented in this paper, looks beyond the pure release of data. It is concerned with three essential questions: First, how can data from different sources be integrated into a consistent framework and made accessible? Second, how can ordinary citizens be supported in easily composing data from different sources in order to address their specific problems? Third, what are interfaces that make it easy for citizens to interact with data in an urban environment? How can data be accessed and collected

Housing and Mobility Toolkit for San Mateo County

Since the end of the Great Recession, San Mateo County has attracted new workers at a record rate without building anywhere near enough housing. This jobs-housing imbalance drives the cost of housing up and forces many moderate and lower-income employees and their families out of the County. A lack of access to quality affordable housing in the County and the entire Bay Area along with limited transportation options means that an increased number of employees drive in and out of the County every workday. The resultant congestion, gridlock, and long commutes along with other negative environmental, social, and economic impacts create a major concern for communities in the County and beyond. Clearly, this problem has two distinct but interrelated dimensions: housing development and transportation planning. A select group of Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) Research Associates worked closely with representatives from the San Mateo County Home for All initiative to help address this challenge by developing a toolkit of successful case studies with a holistic approach to housing development and transportation planning

Governance in niche development for a transition to a new mobility regime

Urban mobility is a difficult sustainability challenge; measures to reduce transport impacts produce only marginal reductions in overall energy use and CO2 emissions. Even fuel switch to electric vehicles and measures to manage traffic produce insufficient improvements. Seeking transport sustainability within the existing socio-technical regime involves policy approaches for dense cities to provide high-capacity, corridor-based public transport, expecting people to arrange their lives around such transport systems. Yet this socio-technical regime ill-fits modern mobility needs. The reluctance to use public transport stems much from this 150 year old regime configuration. The social-technical landscape has shifted significantly: travel patterns are increasingly dispersed in space and time – not funnelled into traditional corridor peak-hour movements. The key is not getting people to return to travel patterns of 100 years ago, but in a transition to a socio-technical transport regime that delivers sustainability compatible with the 21st century social-technical landscape. An opportunity may be emerging for socio-technical configurations in niche environments to effect transitions to alternate mobility futures. Autonomous vehicles are rapidly approaching market application. Since 2011, small autonomous pods have operated on segregated tracks at Heathrow Airport. In 2014 a similar system opened at the Suncheon Bay tourist area in South Korea. Since 2011 there have been public street trials of autonomous vehicles in the USA and in 2015 they became street legal in the UK. The Milton Keynes (MK) ‘Pathfinder’ project focuses on two-seat pods which do not need segregated tracks, but will run on cycleways and footpaths, mixing with cyclists and pedestrians. Trials will start in 2015, on short distance links from the railway station to destinations in Central Milton Keynes. This project forms part of the wider Milton Keynes Future Cities Programme and Open University-led MK:Smart project. This paper draws on these trials in MK to show through case study research how autonomous vehicles applications are moving beyond protected niches and, along with other developments, hold the potential to stimulate a major transition in public transport systems. The vehicles are small and each journey is individual to the passenger(s). Services do not run along corridor routes, like buses and trams, but are based on alternate rule-sets to the existing regime with individual journeys customised for each user. Such developments may therefore stimulate transition to totally different sorts of public transport systems and ultimately, socio-technical mobility regimes, by offering much more to users than any corridor system can provide. Rather than people adjusting their behaviour to bus routes, schedules and operating times, they travel directly, whenever they want, on services running 24/7. Thus these new regimes could be more compatible with lifestyle and economic trends that comprise 21st century socio-technical landscapes. As such, they provide credible alternatives to the private car, and so hold potential to deliver major sustainability gains. But such transitions face major challenges from entrenched actors within the existing regime. Taxis, minicabs and bus operators would be threatened. If the Uber cab app is being blocked by incumbent actors, they look likely to be powerful opponents of autonomous vehicle based cab services. However, MK provides an interesting innovation context where there are several overlapping smart transport niches in different stages of development. As well as autonomous pods, demand responsive minibuses are planned and inductive changed electric buses are in service. If these projects build links to each other (niche accumulation), demonstrate economic value and reproduced beyond their original experimental spaces (niche proliferation), there is potential for them to overcome incumbent resistance. In Milton Keynes, these processes could be getting close to reaching critical mass, opening up the possibility of moving closer to radical regime transitions

Smart Cities and M³: Rapid Research, Meaningful Metrics and Co-Design

The research described in this paper is undertaken under the banner of the smart city, a concept that captures the way urban spaces are re-made by the incursion of new technology. Much of smart is centred on converting everyday activities into data, and using this data to generate knowledge mediated by technology. Ordinary citizens, those that may have their lives impacted by the technology, usually are not properly involved in the ‘smartification’ process. Their perceptions, concerns and expectations should inform the conception and development of smart technologies at the same extent. How to engage general public with smart cities research is the central challenge for the Making Metrics Meaningful (MMM) project. Applying a rapid participatory method, ‘Imagine’ over a five-month period (March – July) the research sought to gain insights from the general public into novel forms of information system innovation. This brief paper describes the nature of the accelerated research undertaken and explores some of the themes which emerged in the analysis. Generic themes, beyond the remit of an explicit transport focus, are developed and pointers towards further research directions are discussed. Participatory methods, including engaging with self- selected transport users actively through both picture creation and programmatically specific musical ‘signatures’ as well as group discussion, were found to be effective in eliciting users’ own concerns, needs and ideas for novel information systems

Business begins at home

One of the most significant trends in the post-industrial era has been for the home to become an important focus for work. The boundaries between work and home are now increasingly blurred, reversing the forces of the industrial era in which places deemed suitable for each were clearly demarcated and physically separate. The most recent published figures available from the Labour Force Survey (2005)1 indicate that 3.1m people now work mainly from home, 11% of the workforce. This represents a rise from 2.3m in 1997 (9% of the workforce), a 35% increase. The majority of homeworkers (2.4m or 77% of the total) are 'teleworkers' – people who use computers and telecommunications to work at home. The number of teleworkers has increased by 1.5m between 1997 and 2005, a 166% increase. Clearly, it is the growth in the number of teleworkers which is driving the increase in homeworking

Smart mobility: opportunity or threat to innovate places and cities

The concept of the “smart mobility” has become something of a buzz phrase in the planning and transport fields in the last decade. After a fervent first phase in which information technology and digital data were considered the answer for making mobility more efficient, more attractive and for increasing the quality of travel, some disappointing has grown around this concept: the distance between the visionarypotentialthatsmartness is providingis too far from the reality of urban mobility in cities. We argue in particular that two main aspects of smart mobility should be eluded: the first refers to the merely application to technology on mobility system, what we called the techo-centric aspect; the second feature is the consumer-centric aspect of smart mobility, that consider transport users only as potential consumers of a service. Starting from this, the study critics the smart mobility approach and applications and argues on a“smarter mobility” approach, in which technologies are only oneaspects of a more complex system. With a view on the urgency of looking beyond technology and beyond consumer-oriented solutions, the study arguments the need for a cross-disciplinary and a more collaborative approach that could supports transition towards a“smarter mobility” for enhancing the quality of life and the development ofvibrant cities. The article does not intend to produce a radical critique of the smart mobility concept,denying a priori its utility. Our perspectiveisthat the smart mobility is sometimes used as an evocativeslogan lacking some fundamental connection with other central aspect of mobility planning and governance. Main research questions are: what is missing in the technology-oriented or in the consumers-oriented smart mobility approach? What are the main risks behind these approaches? To answer this questions the paper provides in Section 2 the rationale behind the paper;Section 3 provides a literature review that explores the evolution on smart mobility paradigm in the last decades analysing in details the “techno-centric”and the “consumer-centric” aspects. Section 4proposes an integrated innovative approach for smart mobility, providing examples and some innovative best practices in Belgium. Some conclusions are finally drawnin Section 5, based on the role of smart mobility to create not only virtual platforms but high quality urban places

A Framework for Integrating Transportation Into Smart Cities

In recent years, economic, environmental, and political forces have quickly given rise to “Smart Cities” -- an array of strategies that can transform transportation in cities. Using a multi-method approach to research and develop a framework for smart cities, this study provides a framework that can be employed to: Understand what a smart city is and how to replicate smart city successes; The role of pilot projects, metrics, and evaluations to test, implement, and replicate strategies; and Understand the role of shared micromobility, big data, and other key issues impacting communities. This research provides recommendations for policy and professional practice as it relates to integrating transportation into smart cities