GPS and GIS

Literature review on the effect of roughness on VOCs.

Traffic congestion has a substantial impact on both the quality of life and economic opportunities available to the lowest income segments of society. Further, congestion exacerbates pollution and GHG emissions and has a known, substantial negative impact on urban GDP growth. Resource-constrained traffic management agencies are challenged to mitigate congestion, when they do not have access to the sophisticated tools commonly used in advanced economies for monitoring real-time traffic conditions and for collecting and analyzing historic travel time data.
Starting in 2011, the project team worked with the Cebu City Government to develop an open-source platform for collecting, visualizing, and analyzing traffic speed data derived from taxi drivers’ smartphones. This pilot project successfully achieved a proof of concept and the platform, Cebu Traffic, won first prize in the 2013 Philippines National E-Governance Competition. With this success, the project team then sought to use these proven methodologies to support the development of a replicable, inexpensive alternative to traditional travel time and congestion data collection and analysis. The goal of this alternative approach would be to empower resource-constrained agencies to make better, evidence-based decisions that previously had been out of reach – decisions about traffic signal timing plans, public transit provision, roadway infrastructure needs, emergency traffic management, and travel demand management.
To this end, the team partnered with GrabTaxi, an on-demand taxi service that generates taxi GPS data in countries the Bank supports, as well as Conveyal, an open-source transport software development firm. With these partnerships and support from the World Bank’s Big Data Challenge Innovation Grant of US$65,000, the team improved upon the initial pilot platform, tested it with data from six countries, and deployed the platform in Cebu City for live testing.
This Project Completion Report covers activities completed under the grant implementation period, which was six months (January to June 2015). The report conclusion presents follow up activities undertaken since this period, as well as planned next steps.

The major emphasis of this dissertation is the development of a toolkit for extracting information associated with movements of individuals from GPS data. To be effective, the toolkit has been developed around three design principles: transferability, modularity, and scalability. Two substantive chapters focus on selected components of the toolkit (map-matching, mode detection); another for the entire toolkit. Final substantive chapter demonstrates the toolkit’s potential by comparing route choice models of work and shop trips using inputs generated by the toolkit.

The use of personal mobile GPS devices offers a potentially powerful use for paratransit. The conventional pickup procedure requires reservations via telephone or through the Internet for the paratransit driver to meet passengers. In this case, the potential problem is that a missed pickup may occur due to the ambiguity of the address information or the inability to find a specific location. However, with the availability of existing mobile GPS devices, passengers and vehicles can be located instantly, thereby facilitating the pickup process. This research project explores the feasibility of using personal mobile GPS devices to help develop more efficient paratransit services. Four different GPS-tracking devices were examined, and a prototype was developed. Using the prototype, the vehicle operator and passengers are able to know each other’s location through the help of an agency dispatcher. With this additional information, it is expected that the number of missed pickups will be reduced. Surveys were also distributed to collect opinions and concerns from different agencies. Results indicated that a majority of transit agencies showed interest in adopting GPS devices to improve paratransit services.

Details on data model and other aspects of establishing a spatial network.

Prepared for the World Bank's EAP Innovation Fund, this report describes how Goolge Earth can be used for project preparation and supervision. It covers (i) data collection options, and (ii) the Google Earth application.

Presentation giving an overview of Google Earth.

A report describing how one undertakes a mobile mapping survey and creates a GIS centreline

Report on establishing a spatial network in a GIS from collecting the raw data through processing and creating a topologically correct network

Report on establishing a spatial network in a GIS from collecting the raw data through processing and creating a topologically correct network

Report on how to create a spatial network, from collecting basic data through manipulating it in a GIS.

Executive summary describing MWH Cambodia LRCS survey.

Report by MWH on calibration procedures used in Cambodia network survey

NCHRP Synthesis 301. This report provides information on the potential and the problems of integrating GPS data with data from GIS to provide departments of transportation with a powerful set of planning and programming tools. It addresses existing data standards and their applicability, procedures for processing and integrating spatial data, map matching algorithms and protocols, and recent developments in positioning, including cellular technology. The synthesis identifies a six-step method designed to help improve the quality of maps and reduce the severity of problems associated with GPS–GIS integration.

Issues and strategy for using spatial measurements on NZ State Highways

Paper describing issues related to integrating GPS survey data with aerial photographs in Samoa.

Paper describing the accuracy of a Trimble Pocket Pathfinder GPS receiver

Report by MWH on conducting a location referencing and condition survey in Laos

Report by MWH from a network survey in Laos describing the database and the survey data

Paper describing the various experiences with kinematic GPS surveys. Shares issues encountered in different countries.

An evaluation of the Pathfinder Pocket's accuracy