On Board Intelligence for Public Transportation in Developing Countries using IoT

Abstract

This study is carried out for indigenous development of an ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) device aimed particularly for public transport buses in the developing countries with poor infrastructure and unaccountable transportation services. The developed system uses IoT technology, extendable hardware and open source software in order to achieve commercial scalability by government and transportation authorities in such countries. The proposed device essentially collects and store data from the bus fleet and communicates the information to a central server from which software applications for passengers and transport operators are developed accordingly. The device functionality is divided into three categories which are Environment Sensing, Vehicle Management and Safety. The acquired dataset can be used to produce useful insights that can benefit the social and commercial sector of the city. Analytics such as fuel consumption, vehicle health, predicting driver behaviour, forecasting of rush-hours and vehicle maintenance requirements can be estimated. The device is packaged into a box with proper considerations of reliability in terms of power, weather proofing, storage and cabling. The proposed device will allow the passengers, especially in developing cities, to plan their journeys ahead of time and provide a holistic decision support system to the transport authorities.