Lab 2 – Current ITS Product Description
By
Charles J Deaver
07788057
05/01/2012
“I certify that the work submitted is entirely my own and I have not received external
assistance in preparation of this assignment. The work meets the requirements of the
ODU Honor system.”
In fulfillment of requirements for
Old Dominion University
Professional Workforce Development I
CS410
Spring 2011
A web application designed for the transit authority will provide granular up to
the minute information regarding the location and occupancy of every train system. HRT
authority officials will be able to view current and past train occupancy data displayed on
a web GUI. A search capability will provided past data past rider data for analysis.
Rider predictions will also be available based on rider and event data. These functions
will be the key to providing transit authorities the ability to see the benefits of granular
data and how they can be used to improve operating efficiency by providing more or less
trains depending on the current use. The database will also contain the historical
information of train ridership data and calendar of events for use by prediction algorithms
for forecasting of ridership.
The transit authority app (TAP) will have three distinct functions that provide an
overall picture to the operator. The first is the current status of the light rail system. This
display will display a map of the rail lines with the running trains in their respective
locations. It will also have a listing of all the trains on the tracks with their occupancy and
schedule. Another part of this screen will display alerts and events of interest for better
user awareness. The purpose of this screen is to provide the user with real-time awareness
of the system. All of the live data provided to this display will be retrieved when current
data is sent from the individual trains. Data concerning events will be provided by the
database server through an Ajax refreshed JDBC connection. When the user needs to
view the past information they will switch to another tab that is designed to display
historical information.
The history portion of the TAP will allow the user access to historical train data
including planned vs. actual running times, actual occupancy, and load deltas at any
particular stop. The query engine will provide returns by date, specific occupancy,
percentage of delta for a particular stop, or a combination of all three. The data can then
be used to determine where service changes are required to meet operational efficiency.
The queries will be built in stored procedures within the database and the required
variables will be passed to the database through a JDBC connection.
The third function will provide the predictive capability using historical data
combined with trend data and upcoming event data. The data will be displayed though a
graph that shows the predicted ridership compared to the planned capacity. The graph
will also be adjustable by date range to allow for short or long term planning. The
functions involved are calculations that can be determined by any programming
language.
Current Operations
•Train Locations
•Occupancy Data
•Today's Events
•System Alerts
Historical Operations
•Queryable data
•On-time rate
•Ridership
•Occupancy change at stops
Future Predictions
•Upcoming events
•Known history
•Rider trends