IBM has improved public transport routes

Researchers at IBM have collected data on the movements of 500,000 users of mobile phone, and conducted analysis of the information received, on the basis of which created an algorithm to improve public transport.

The first people who could evaluate the work of this optimization were residents of the Abizhan city (the capital of Côte d'Ivoire), which has a population of 3.8 million people. Developers have submitted maps with 65 possible options for optimization. In red were colored existing routes, and blue – alternative ones. It was also proposed to introduce three new routes with a total time saving of 10% in passenger-minutes, including waiting time and travel time.

Studies on the movement of people have been particularly effective in new housing estates. Exactly here it is possible to determine at what time and in what directions citizens move.

Experience with Abizhanom demonstrated that the IBM researchers have managed to create an efficient tool to improve the infrastructure of major cities. Maps for route optimization were created using a database containing 2.5 billion records. It is the world's largest database, which is available for research. In this case, all the statistics is anonymous, any personal information is removed.

In Abizhane urban transport includes 539 buses, 11,000 taxis and 5,000 public minibuses. The researchers processed huge amounts of information and data of 500,000 phone owners. During each SMS-message and call data is stored on the base station that makes it possible with a high degree of accuracy to determine the location of a person.

If the use IBM researchers in real time, it is possible to respond quickly to an increase in human traffic and edit traffic schedules.

Progress never stops. And today people start inventing programs to predict crime by a similar line of observation.