PageRank-based Traffic Simulation Using Taxi Probe Data
Naoto Mukai · Procedia Computer Science · 2013
Traffic analysis is an important work to transport people and goods to their destinations in a quick and efficient manner. In these years, probe taxis, which equip with some sensors (e.g., global positioning system), become widely used in Tokyo. Additionally, their sensor data enable us to predict the amount of future traffic. In this paper, we report a web-based viewer of taxi probe data which are used for traffic simulation. Moreover, we propose a traffic simulation model based on the concept of “PageRank”, which is used for the Google search engine, to gain a quick overview of traffic flow in Tokyo. The original algorithm of “PageRank” needs a matrix calculation called “Google matrix”, but the matrix calculation can be simulated by transitions of web surfers among web pages. Thus, we also assume the transitions of taxis as the same characteristics of the web surfers, and develop a traffic simulator to find important spots which have a strong effect on transportation efficiency.