This may be useful for eliminating the consequences of an emergency in the subway
An analysis of the migration of passengers in the subway using their mobile phones was proposed by information security specialists from Moscow State University. Lomonosov.
The need for innovation is motivated by the fact that the development of the city, the creation of a comfortable environment in it is impossible without the management of passenger and traffic flows. The level of urbanization, which, according to UN forecasts, will reach 70 percent by 2050, requires the introduction of new methods for the development of transport systems.
Until recently, the main sources of data on transport flows in the Moscow Metro have been population censuses, surveys, and also manual counting of passengers using counters.
With the advent of transport maps, processing big traffic data is becoming easier. Every time a passenger swipes their card to the reader on the turnstile, information about this is recorded and can be used to analyze traffic flows.
But here's where they will go next, being underground, according to the transport map no longer be able to know. For this task, scientists have proposed using mobile phones, which residents always carry with them.
Each enabled cell phone communicates time and delay information with base stations. Based on these data, determine it location is not difficult. Moscow State University offers operators to collect this data and provide it to scientists to measure passenger traffic between city districts.
According to experts, you don’t have to worry about the safety of personal information, since the data is processed in such a way that only information about the general flow, and not about the trips of a particular person.
Such an open platform for transport data analysis will help city services to quickly take measures to change the city's transport network in connection with possible emergencies in the metro. Dmitry Namiot, a senior researcher at the Department of Information Security of the Moscow State University, gives an example. – After the driver informs on this section of the metro, for safety reasons, it is necessary to stop the movement of trains and start compensatory buses. Thanks to our platform, the operator will be able to quickly find out the number of passengers who will be affected by this incident, and then calculate the required number of compensatory buses and their intervals.
If this method takes root, in the future, MSU scientists will expand the capabilities of the new platform » ;scanning users' phones», taking into circulation not only data from the metro, but also from buses, car sharing systems, renting scooters and bicycles.