Beating Hong Kong's traffic jams: university tests new route planner for drivers
But PolyU system is limited by privacy rules on gathering data from vehicles
A Hong Kong university has developed a more reliable route planner for the city's drivers to ensure they get to their destinations on time, but its application is highly limited by privacy restrictions on data gathering.
The system, developed by Polytechnic University's department of civil and environmental engineering, uses real-time traffic data to provide drivers with the most efficient routes.
Unlike Google Maps or other services that give average travel times, PolyU uses an algorithm taking into account weather conditions, accidents and travel demand to give a more accurate prediction of journey times.
"With the integration of all available data, we have developed a traffic simulator to predict the travel conditions for tomorrow on the basis of historical traffic data, and we can update the travel-time prediction on the basis of available real-time data," said the department head, Professor William H.K.Lam.
The system is based on traffic data collected by the Transport Department. However, privacy laws mean only data from registered commercial vehicles can be used, limiting real-time data collection to 25 per cent of vehicles.
But Lam insisted that even with such limitations, the system is stable compared with Google's which is dependent on the number of users who choose to share their GPS location services.
