Traffic Map 2.0: a further development of the OpenStreetMap Project?

Enrico Steiger, Traffic Consultants Ltd.

Details about the talk:
Traffic Map 2.0: a further development of the OpenStreetMap Project?

Increasing traffic volumes are causing more and more infrastructural bottlenecks and congestion inside traffic networks. Sufficient coverage and overall information concerning specific traffic conditions for all transport modalities from collecting traffic data are prerequisites for planning, designing, and optimizing purposes. The Financial expenditure for entire detections of traffic situations is high and especially unaffordable for public administrations. In order to still be able to use existing traffic capacities effectively and to derive key figures of traffic flows for improving and optimizing traffic network strategies, new innovative solutions in generating traffic data need to be developed. The following abstract describes the implementation of a new approach for gathering traffic data using voluntary geographic information from the OpenStreetMap project.

Due to the data collection process in OpenStreetMap own recorded tracks with GPS devices can be uploaded into the database. Currently around 1.9 billion GPS coordinates points (august 2010) are recorded worldwide (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats). The value of this data lies in the procession of their geographical position in order to further develop and "expand" the existing OSM road network. As analysis have shown OSM GPS tracks are also useful for identifying motions (localization with time stamps) and therefore segment based travel speeds and travel times can be ascertained. This results in the potential of creating a user generated traffic map 2.0.
OSM GPS data for a predefined geographical area is first exported, sorted and finally filtered in order to eliminate GPS data regarding incorrect parameters (excessive velocities etc.). Using a mode of transport recognition algorithm based on different GPS parameter analysis (speed, acceleration, heading change rate), it is possible to match tracks to the corresponding means of traffic like bus, train, car, bike or pedestrian. Clustering and classification processes also enable to detect interchanging points of possible intermodal routes. To analyze the GPS parameters for each road graph, the track information is map matched on the OSM road network. In the actual traffic analysis, daytime related average speeds, maximum velocities and standard deviations of all OSM GPS data for each road section will be computed. The larger the data base, the more accurate are the average speed calculations for individual sections on the road network. The description of the actual traffic condition is determined by Level of service (LOS) measurements.

Traffic data generated from OpenStreetMap cannot be compared with traditional forms of traffic knowledge acquisitions according to its data quantities. Individual GNSS positions, free offered by community members, are processed to provide realistic route related travel times and are improving mobility and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) for all road users. The present growth rate of GPS data implicates an enormous potential for the OpenStreetMap project and user-generated, traffic related content in the context of a traffic map 2.0.

Details about the speaker:
Enrico Steiger studied geography at the University of Leipzig, specializing in the field of Geoinformatics/ -statistics and transport geography. Since November 2009 he is employed by the company TraffiCon Ltd. working at Salzburg in the field of Geoinformatics. In addition his main focus is based on the processing and development of travel time models based on GNSS data and the use of community-based routable graphs in OpenStreetMap.

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