A Systematic Literature Review on Machine Learning in Shared Mobility

Shared mobility has emerged as a sustainable alternative to both private transportation and traditional public transport, promising to reduce the number of private vehicles on roads while offering users greater flexibility. Today, urban areas are home to a myriad of innovative services, including car-sharing, ride-sharing, and micromobility solutions like moped-sharing, bike-sharing, and e-scooter-sharing. Given the intense competition and the inherent operational complexities of shared mobility systems, providers are increasingly seeking specialized decision-support methodologies to boost operational efficiency. While recent research indicates that advanced machine learning methods can tackle the intricate challenges in shared mobility management decisions, a thorough evaluation of existing research is essential to fully grasp its potential and pinpoint areas needing further exploration. This paper presents a systematic literature review that specifically targets the application of Machine Learning for decision-making in Shared Mobility Systems. Our review underscores that Machine Learning offers methodological solutions to specific management challenges crucial for the effective operation of Shared Mobility Systems. We delve into the methods and datasets employed, spotlight research trends, and pinpoint research gaps. Our findings culminate in a comprehensive framework of Machine Learning techniques designed to bolster managerial decision-making in addressing challenges specific to Shared Mobility across various levels

Real-Time Optimization for Dynamic Ride-Sharing

Throughout the last decade, the advent of novel mobility services such as ride-hailing, car-sharing, and ride-sharing has shaped urban mobility. While these types of services offer flexible on-demand transportation for customers, they may also increase the load on the, already strained, road infrastructure and exacerbate traffic congestion problems. One potential way to remedy this problem is the increased usage of dynamic ride-sharing services. In this type of service, multiple customer trips are combined into share a vehicle simultaneously. This leads to more efficient vehicle utilization, reduced prices for customers, and less traffic congestion at the cost of slight delays compared to direct transportation in ride-hailing services. In this thesis, we consider the planning and operation of such dynamic ride-sharing services. We present a wider look at the planning context of dynamic ride-sharing and discuss planning problems on the strategical, tactical, and operational level. Subsequently, our focus is on two operational planning problems: dynamic vehicle routing, and idle vehicle repositioning. Regarding vehicle routing, we introduce the vehicle routing problem for dynamic ridesharing and present a solution procedure. Our algorithmic approach consists of two phases: a fast insertion heuristic, and a local search improvement phase. The former handles incoming trip requests and quickly assigns them to suitable vehicles while the latter is responsible for continuously improving the current routing plan. This way, we enable fast response times for customers while simultaneously effectively utilizing available computational resources. Concerning the idle vehicle repositioning problem, we propose a mathematical model that takes repositioning decisions and adequately reflects available vehicle resources as well as a forecast of the upcoming trip request demand. This model is embedded into a real-time planning algorithm that regularly re-optimizes the movement of idle vehicles. Through an adaptive parameter calculation process, our algorithm dynamically adapts to changes in the current system state. To evaluate our algorithms, we present a modular simulation-based evaluation framework. We envision that this framework may also be used by other researchers and developers. In this thesis, we perform computational evaluations on a variety of scenarios based on real-world data from Chengdu, New York City, and Hamburg. The computational results show that we are able to produce high-quality solutions in real-time, enabling the usage in high-demand settings. In addition, our algorithms perform robustly in a variety of settings and are quickly adapted to new application settings, such as the deployment in a new city

Towards a Persuasive Recommender for Bike Sharing Systems: A Defeasible Argumentation Approach

[EN] This work proposes a persuasion model based on argumentation theory and users' characteristics for improving the use of resources in bike sharing systems, fostering the use of the bicycles and thus contributing to greater energy sustainability by reducing the use of carbon-based fuels. More specifically, it aims to achieve a balanced network of pick-up and drop-off stations in urban areas with the help of the users, thus reducing the dedicated management trucks that redistribute bikes among stations. The proposal aims to persuade users to choose different routes from the shortest route between a start and an end location. This persuasion is carried out when it is not possible to park the bike in the desired station due to the lack of parking slots, or when the user is highly influenceable. Differently to other works, instead of employing a single criteria to recommend alternative stations, the proposed system can incorporate a variety of criteria. This result is achieved by providing a defeasible logic-based persuasion engine that is capable of aggregating the results from multiple recommendation rules. The proposed framework is showcased with an example scenario of a bike sharing system.This work was supported by the projects TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and TIN2017-89156-R of the Spanish government, and by the grant program for the recruitment of doctors for the Spanish system of science and technology (PAID-10-14) of the Universitat Politècnica de València.Diez-Alba, C.; Palanca Cámara, J.; Sanchez-Anguix, V.; Heras, S.; Giret Boggino, AS.; Julian Inglada, VJ. (2019). Towards a Persuasive Recommender for Bike Sharing Systems: A Defeasible Argumentation Approach. Energies. 12(4):1-19. https://doi.org/10.3390/en12040662S119124Erdoğan, G., Laporte, G., & Wolfler Calvo, R. (2014). The static bicycle relocation problem with demand intervals. European Journal of Operational Research, 238(2), 451-457. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2014.04.013Alvarez-Valdes, R., Belenguer, J. M., Benavent, E., Bermudez, J. D., Muñoz, F., Vercher, E., & Verdejo, F. (2016). Optimizing the level of service quality of a bike-sharing system. Omega, 62, 163-175. doi:10.1016/j.omega.2015.09.007Schuijbroek, J., Hampshire, R. C., & van Hoeve, W.-J. (2017). Inventory rebalancing and vehicle routing in bike sharing systems. European Journal of Operational Research, 257(3), 992-1004. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2016.08.029Li, L., & Shan, M. (2016). Bidirectional Incentive Model for Bicycle Redistribution of a Bicycle Sharing System during Rush Hour. Sustainability, 8(12), 1299. doi:10.3390/su8121299Anagnostopoulou, E., Bothos, E., Magoutas, B., Schrammel, J., & Mentzas, G. (2018). Persuasive Technologies for Sustainable Mobility: State of the Art and Emerging Trends. Sustainability, 10(7), 2128. doi:10.3390/su10072128Galbrun, E., Pelechrinis, K., & Terzi, E. (2016). Urban navigation beyond shortest route: The case of safe paths. Information Systems, 57, 160-171. doi:10.1016/j.is.2015.10.005Ferrara, J. (2013). Games for Persuasion: Argumentation, Procedurality, and the Lie of Gamification. Games and Culture, 8(4), 289-304. doi:10.1177/1555412013496891Fei, X., Shah, N., Verba, N., Chao, K.-M., Sanchez-Anguix, V., Lewandowski, J., … Usman, Z. (2019). CPS data streams analytics based on machine learning for Cloud and Fog Computing: A survey. Future Generation Computer Systems, 90, 435-450. doi:10.1016/j.future.2018.06.042Faed, A., Hussain, O. K., & Chang, E. (2013). A methodology to map customer complaints and measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. Service Oriented Computing and Applications, 8(1), 33-53. doi:10.1007/s11761-013-0142-6Xu, W., Li, Z., Cheng, C., & Zheng, T. (2012). Data mining for unemployment rate prediction using search engine query data. Service Oriented Computing and Applications, 7(1), 33-42. doi:10.1007/s11761-012-0122-2GARCÍA, A. J., & SIMARI, G. R. (2004). Defeasible logic programming: an argumentative approach. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 4(1+2), 95-138. doi:10.1017/s147106840300167

Characterizing the stocks, flows, and carbon impact of dockless sharing bikes in China

The booming dockless sharing bikes (DSBs) in China, as a new sharing economy business model, have attracted increasing public and academic attention after 2015. The impact of DSBs development on the stocks and flows of bikes and the resource and climate consequences of short-lived DSBs, however, remain poorly understood. In this study, we characterized the stocks and flows of both DSBs and regular private bikes in China from 1950 to 2020 and evaluated the carbon cost and benefit of booming DSBs. We found China's bike consumption and stock decreased slightly after a fast development from the late 1970s and then a peak in the mid-1990s, resulting in a relatively low ownership of approximately 0.3 unit per person and 70% of production being exported in recent years. Despite a temporal boost, the unsustainable development of DSBs may affect the bike industry in the long term, because of its skyrocketing market share (from less than 1% to 80%) and short lifetime. Nevertheless, DSBs development still leads to an overall climate gain in China, due to its higher stock efficiency and potentials to substitute more carbon intensive trips. We suggest an urgent need for more empirical studies on the use (e.g., substitution ratio for other transportation models) of DSBs in China and a necessity for better management of DSB development with efforts of all relevant stakeholders

A simulation framework for the design of a station-based bike sharing system

Many cities and towns offer nowadays to citizens a bike sharing system (BSS). When a company starts the service, several decisions have to be taken on the location and size of the rental stations, and the number of vehicles to use to re-balance the bikes in the stations, in addition to the cost and policies for the payment of the service. Also, when the service is in place, it is often necessary to modify it, in many cases to expand it. In this paper, starting from the experience gained in a real-case application, we present a simulation framework to support the tactical decisions in the design or revision of a BSS. We will also present the application of the framework to the case of Bicimia in Brescia, Italy