Mobile phone data could help to plan a bus route and reduce traffic

In a competition titled Data for Development (D4D) run by Orange cellphone network, IBM researchers have claimed they can use cellphone records to plan better bus route.

IBM in about 500,000 of the records, the data includes the nearest tower (mast) to the person making a call, along with any changes of nearest tower during the call.

IBM used the data to figure out the routes took while making calls in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city.

IBM then cross-referenced the journey data with the existing bus network and traced the likely effects of making 65 changes to the network.

It concluded three changes would be most effective: adding two new routes as shown in the image and extending one that’s already used.

The entrants into the competition were expected to write a 250 word description of their research project before getting access to the data of about 2.5 billion records of calls and text messages involving Orange customers in the Ivory Coast over a four month period.

Olivier Verscheure, senior scientist at IBM’s research laboratory in Dublin said: “We found that we could reduce the travel times of people by 10% across the city.”

“If we could have merged the city data, such as the bus timetable, we could have the potential to completely change the existing network,” he continued.

“It is about understanding how people use a city, their movements and the digital signatures left by public transport to optimize the city’s infrastructure.”

The data is from five million mobile phones in the Ivory Coast. The network of the city includes 539 large buses, 5,000 mini-buses and 11,000 shared taxis.

The aim of the competition is to help address society development questions in novel ways.

The winners will be announced later today when the project is submitted at a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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