Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan, is one of the most heavily populated cities with 2.6 million people residing on 271.7997 square kilometres. The megacity has 1,080,000 motorbikes and 710,000 cars running within the city. On the other hand, with the growing demand for better tourism service, traffic has become a significant challenge and the priority for the local government.
After maturing the transportation system, Taipei City Department of Transportation decided to establish an information platform named ATIS, the Advanced Traveler Information System, to support traffic management administrators in making decisions, taking appropriate actions to relieve traffic congestion and improving the quality of the traffic network.
Through accessing the ATIS platform, it can assist travelers and drivers to obtain real-time traffic information and then plan their trips before travelling and making route decisions to minimise travel time and improve travel safety.
CHALLENGES OF THE PROJECT
With the development of technology, information has become easier to obtain over the internet; however, the long waiting time and insufficient availability of information make it difficult for users to search and receive required data quickly.
In order to increase the accessibility of online transportation services to the public, Taipei City Department of Transportation utilises server GIS technology to integrate different transportation information resources into a single platform which can offer accurate traffic data to the public.
This biggest challenge of this project is how to integrate the massive amount of data such as traffic event reporting system, closed circuit TV (CCTV), monitoring system and changeable message signals (CMS) from different governmental units and make real-time traffic information more available to users through the internet and mobiles.
INNOVATIONS IN TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICE
Using server GIS technology, ATIS is able to integrate a wide range of transport information seamlessly, enhancing the traffic data distribution and security and helping reach a minimum maintenance cost for the management.
The SuperGIS Server, incorporated by Taipei City Department of Transportation is capable of creating, managing, integrating and distributing a variety of geospatial resources such as maps, globes, geodatabases, tools, etc., over the internet to extensively support desktop, mobile, and web applications.
Taking advantages of the highly scalable GIS server platform and cloud infrastructure, SuperGIS Server allows the managerial staff to customise an appropriate server environment in which spatial resources and data can be shared among system administrators, the enterprise management and the public.
Due to an explosive increase in the number of smart phone users, the Taipei City government has extended its application over a network. As a consequence, the app, Easy Travel in Taipei, was introduced to the smart phone users.
In the data distribution phase of ATIS, several interfaces including web and mobile subscription are provided for users to retrieve realtime traffic information and daily weather report provided by the ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) according to the device location.
OTHER IMPLEMENTATIONS
The solutions provided by the Server GIS comprise three sections, frontend demonstration, mobile/PDA web and back-end management system.
Front-end demonstration: This includes map manipulation, static information query and dynamic information query. Users can query real-time dynamic information online, such as bus information, realtime traffic images of road conditions, road events, changeable message signals (CMS), travel time on national highways, average vehicle speed and weather information.
Mobile/PDA web: When applying the app, Easy Travel in Taipei, to the mobile devices, users can enjoy the transport information service anywhere and anytime. Moreover, the subscribers of Taipei City ATIS Web can further receive road incident reports via email or SMS on mobiles.
To satisfy the government requirements, the ATIS has been developed to accomplish the goal of compiling all kinds of traffic data from units under other city or county governments and distributing realtime traffic information successfully.
BENEFITS TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY
Through accessing the Server GIS service, the citizens and visitors can easily retrieve the traffic information through the browser without installing any plug-in programs and use other traffic related services such as bus routes planning and itinerary planning.
Moreover, the wellestablished cycleways offer people another transport option to make a difference to the city. “YouBike” is the public commuter bicycle rental system designed for people who can query the nearest bike rental stations around them.
BENEFITS TO THE CITY
By accessing ATIS, citizens can receive the information through the browser without installing any plugin programme and avail traffic related services such as bus routes planning and train schedule.
ATIS also plays the important role of connecting a variety of traffic information databases that exist within different governmental units. In order to ensure the stability and mobility of the data, this server will keep track of the receiving status of upstream information and report exception events, while serving as the streaming server.
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
Experts suggest that travelling by public transport is better for reducing carbon footprint and carbon management than driving cars. Recently, city governors across the world have been engaged in stimulating low carbon ideas.
With the advantages, both citizens and visitors are willing to utilise public transit. Climate change can be mitigated when people decrease the use of electronic vehicles.
