14 research outputs found
Validation of Automatic Vehicle Location Data in Public Transport Systems
AbstractPerformance metrics for public transport systems can be calculated from automatic vehicle location (AVL) data but data collection subsystems can introduce errors into the data which would invalidate these calculations, giving rise to misleading conclusions. In this paper we present a range of methods for visualising and validating AVL data before performance metrics are computed. We illustrate our presentation with the specific example of the Lothian Buses Airlink bus, a frequent service connecting Edinburgh city centre and Edinburgh airport. Performance metrics for frequent services are based on headways, the separation in space and time between subsequent buses serving a route. This paper provides a practical experience report of working with genuine vehicle location data and illustrates where care and attention is needed in cleaning data before results are computed from the data which could incorrectly reflect the true level of service provided
Bounding Mean First Passage Times in Population Continuous-Time Markov Chains
We consider the problem of bounding mean first passage times and reachability probabilities for the class of population continuous-time Markov chains, which capture stochastic interactions between groups of identical agents. The quantitative analysis of such models is notoriously difficult since typically neither state-based numerical approaches nor methods based on stochastic sampling give efficient and accurate results. Here, we propose a novel approach that leverages techniques from martingale theory and stochastic processes to generate constraints on the statistical moments of first passage time distributions. These constraints induce a semi-definite program that can be used to compute exact bounds on reachability probabilities and mean first passage times without numerically solving the transient probability distribution of the process or sampling from it. We showcase the method on some test examples and tailor it to models exhibiting multimodality, a class of particularly challenging scenarios from biology
Collective Adaptive Systems: Qualitative and Quantitative Modelling and Analysis (Dagstuhl Seminar 14512)
This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 14512 "Collective Adaptive Systems: Qualitative and Quantitative Modelling and Analysis". Besides presentations on current work in the area, the seminar focused on the following topics:
(i) Modelling techniques and languages for collective adaptive systems based on the above formalisms. (ii) Verification of collective adaptive systems. (iii) Humans-in-the-loop in collective adaptive systems
Heavy traffic analysis of a polling model with retrials and glue periods
We present a heavy traffic analysis of a single-server polling model, with
the special features of retrials and glue periods. The combination of these
features in a polling model typically occurs in certain optical networking
models, and in models where customers have a reservation period just before
their service period. Just before the server arrives at a station there is some
deterministic glue period. Customers (both new arrivals and retrials) arriving
at the station during this glue period will be served during the visit of the
server. Customers arriving in any other period leave immediately and will retry
after an exponentially distributed time. As this model defies a closed-form
expression for the queue length distributions, our main focus is on their
heavy-traffic asymptotics, both at embedded time points (beginnings of glue
periods, visit periods and switch periods) and at arbitrary time points. We
obtain closed-form expressions for the limiting scaled joint queue length
distribution in heavy traffic and use these to accurately approximate the mean
number of customers in the system under different loads.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figure
Spatio-temporal model-checking of vehicular movement in public transport systems
We present the use of a novel spatio-temporal model checker to detect problems in the data and operation of a collective adaptive system. Data correctness is important to ensure operational correctness in systems which adapt in response to data. We illustrate the theory with several concrete examples, addressing both the detection of errors in vehicle location data for buses in the city of Edinburgh and the undesirable phenomenon of “clumping” which occurs when there is not enough separation between subsequent buses serving the same route. Vehicle location data are visualised symbolically on a street map, and categories of problems identified by the spatial part of the model checker are rendered by highlighting the symbols for vehicles or other objects that satisfy a property of interest. Behavioural correctness makes use of both the spatial and temporal aspects of the model checker to determine from a series of observations of vehicle locations whether the system is failing to meet the expected quality of service demanded by system regulators