Traffic condition is more than colored lines on a map: Characterization of Waze alerts

Abstract

Participatory sensor network (PSN) enables the understanding of city dynamics and the urban behavioral patterns of their inhabitants. In this work, we focus our analysis on a specific PSN, derived from Waze, for sensing traffic conditions. Our objective is to characterize the properties of this PSN, its broad and global spatial coverage as well as its limitations. We also bring discussions on different opportunities for application design using this network. We claim that the PSN derived from Waze has the potential to help us in the better understanding of traffic problem reasons. Besides that, it could be useful for improving algorithms used in navigation services: (1) by exploiting the provided real-time traffic information or (2) by helping in the identification of valuable pieces of information that are hard to detect with traditional sensors, such as car accidents and potholes. © 2013 Springer International Publishing.