IETE Journal of Research

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Spatio-temporal Network-Constrained Trajectory

Data Model and Service Reliability Assessment

Muhammad Burhan Khalid, Muhammad Haris, Qudsia Gulzar, Muhammad

Hamid Ch & Nida Samad

To cite this article: Muhammad Burhan Khalid, Muhammad Haris, Qudsia Gulzar, Muhammad
Hamid Ch & Nida Samad (2017): Spatio-temporal Network-Constrained Trajectory Data Model and
Service Reliability Assessment, IETE Journal of Research, DOI: 10.1080/03772063.2017.1369372

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IETE JOURNAL OF RESEARCH, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/03772063.2017.1369372

Spatio-temporal Network-Constrained Trajectory Data Model and Service

Reliability Assessment
Muhammad Burhan Khalid1, Muhammad Haris2, Qudsia Gulzar2, Muhammad Hamid Ch2 and Nida Samad1,2
1
Sw3 Solutions, Lahore, Pakistan; 2GIS Centre, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Due to urbanization and increase in traffic density, provision of efficient public transport facility is a Data cleaning; Map
major component of planning and development. The spatio-temporal data of vehicles’ movement matching; Mobility data;
have mainly led to mobility pattern analysis, which eventually reveal new information about the Spatial entities; Trajectory
efficiency of transport service. This research focuses on extracting mobility patterns of bus service
for students in Lahore City. Trajectory data collected through GPS survey have been processed by
using MYSQL spatial database applications and HTML to identify areas in entire route of bus service
causing delay. Three different types of delay have been calculated, namely stop delay, simple path
delay, and path repeated delay. The entire analysis results reveal that mainly the delay is caused at
start segments of planned route or the last segment of stop route. The major cause of delay is bus
movement on tertiary roads through congested commercial areas.

1. INTRODUCTION network-constrained trajectories in which objects move

on a predefined path and are partitioned on the bases of
With rapid and unplanned growth of cities, traffic vol-
stops. With advances in location-aware technologies
ume and density have increased manifold resulting in
such as Global Positioning System (GPS), radio-
traffic congestion and jams. As a result, efficient route
frequency identification (RFID), and autonomous
planning is the most important research domain in
agents, we can track moving objects with increasingly
order to enhance transportation system efficiency in
finer spatial resolutions for longer periods of time. These
terms of time, fuel, and cost management. Such manage-
have led to the accumulation of large repositories of tra-
ment system needs continuous mobility data of moving
jectories in many real-world applications [4].
vehicles. Recent advances in wireless communication,
sensor network, and location determination technologies
GPS is a Global Navigation Satellite System for location
make it possible to gather continuous spatio-temporal
determination. From the last three decades, GPS has been
data which represent positions and movements of mov-
widely used for trajectory data collection. The GPS has
ing objects [1].
emerged for civilian use in the 1990s as the space geodetic
technique being accurate and affordable [5]. Trajectory
A mobility data-set normally consists of a set of moving
data acquired with the help of GPS are X and Y locations
objects (e.g. people, cars, or animals) and their trajecto-
in sequence with time stamp. As these data are in digital
ries over space and time. Mobility data analysis is of
format, it can be directly handled in GIS applications.
great importance to advance our understanding of com-
There are many advantages: under-reporting of trips is
plex space–time dynamics in a variety of domains,
less likely, the data are immediately available in a digital
including urban planning, transportation, demography,
form and can be analysed in a Geographical Information
and emergency management. There are great challenges,
System (GIS) environment, and, in general, more data are
however, for the analysis of mobility data due to their
available at a finer level of resolution [6–8].
massive data volume and complexity. For example, a
data-set may have millions of points/movements and
unknown structures/patterns over space and time [2].
2. DATA PROCESSING
A trajectory is a sequence of sampled locations and time Lahore is the second largest metropolitan area of Pakistan
stamps along the route of a moving object [3]. Trajecto- and the largest metropolitan area in Punjab province.
ries are normally of two types: the first type is of trajecto- Due to rapid urbanization, increased traffic density results
ries in which objects are moving freely, while the other is in travel time loss. This research aims at developing a
© 2017 IETE
2 M. B. KHALID ET AL.: SPATIO-TEMPORAL NETWORK-CONSTRAINED TRAJECTORY DATA MODEL AND SERVICE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT
Figure 1: Logical schema
network-constrained trajectory data along a route of bus
service in Lahore city provided for university students to
move from one campus to another campus. The total
length of trajectory is 12.8 km, planned for 30 minutes
and partitioned by 11 stops to provide on-the-way pick
and drop facility to students. Trajectory data collected six
times through GPS survey identify time delay in service
by using GIS analysis techniques. The main advantage of
GIS, the possibility of integrating spatial and alphanu-
meric data, has made it widely applicable to a variety of
fields. GIS allows new processing methods to be used and
provides high-quality presentation of the processed data.
These characteristics make it an unavoidable decision-
making tool in a situation when data relevant to a deci-
sion include a spatial component [9].
To analyse the bus service efficiency spatial and non-
spatial data is processed by using Arc Map for spatial
data development, Visual paradigm for database model-
ling, MYSQL for database implementation, php for data
manipulation and analysis and QGIS for visualization of
data during processing and display of analysis results.
The GIS uses complex structures of data in order to be
able to describe the physical objects and their interrela-
tions [10]. In the entire research project, three different
spatial components have been prepared, namely bus route
from origin to destination, stops on the route, and GPS
survey points from moving buses. As the first data
preparation step, a line shapefile was created by digitizing
the selected route in ArcGIS software, and a point shape-
file of 11 stops was created from Arc Blue images. The
coordinates of running bus were collected by using
android-based GPS tracker application after every two sec-
onds and sent it to online server with timestamp (Figure 2
(a)).
After the collection of trajectory data was data modelling
stage. GISs can be integrated successfully with modern
database management systems. Database management is
described as linking topology data and attributes to geo-
graphical elements (a point, line, polygon) [9]. In the
next step to define entities, their attributes and relation-
ship between entities conceptual, logical, and physical
data models were developed in visual paradigm. Visual
paradigm supports a number of database types such as
MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL (www.
visual-paradigm.com). Through this tool, conceptual,
logical, and physical schemas are designed and reverse it
into MySQL database type as given in Figure 1.
Afterwards, route shapefile and stop shapefile were con-
verted into database format for further calculations and
analysis. ESRI shapefile is being given as an input data-
set in Shp2mysql program and outputs SQL command
files which is used in the MySQL spatial database. This
application uses functionality from shapelib 1.2.9 by
Frank Warmerdam to read from ESRI Shape files
 M. B. KHALID ET AL.: SPATIO-TEMPORAL NETWORK-CONSTRAINED TRAJECTORY DATA MODEL AND SERVICE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT
Figure 2: Raw and processed trajectories
(http://shapelib.maptools.org). While live-info table was
populated by survey points collected through GPS.
The next important step was reconstruction of raw tra-
jectory data by using trajectory generalization (data
cleaning) and map-matching techniques. GPS systems
are routinely used for navigation and geodetic measure-
ments. The results from the measurements in real time
are not needed, and therefore, a post-processing proce-
dure could be applied to improve the accuracy of the col-
lected measurements [11].
The GPS device may generate (infrequent) errors
due to the interferences with the surroundings
such as trees and built-ups in a non-obvious way
[12]. Therefore, raw trajectory data always are
cleaned through different techniques and recon-
structed trajectory is used for analysis. The pur-
pose of trajectory reconstruction and partition is
to extract all characteristic points and get rid of
useless location data. It can reduce the storage,
usage, and improve the efficiency for further simi-
larity measurement [1].
Figure 3: Processed trajectories and bus schedule
3
In the first step of data cleaning, clusters were generalized
from raw trajectory. Cluster reduction reduces the sys-
tematic noise in the data. As trajectory data of moving
object are collected through tracking devices, due to its
inherent errors, it cannot be used directly for analysis.
Even if the vehicle is not moving or moving slowly due
to traffic congestion, the tracking device records a minor
deviation in true position resulting in clusters of points at
the same location. Due to their unpredictability and falsi-
fying characteristics, the GPS point clusters could be
extremely misleading to map-matching procedures and
are the greatest cause of overshoots and mismatch [13].
In order to remove clusters, two different filters were gen-
erated by using php commands. The first filter removed
the points having one-second time interval (Figure 2(b)),
whereas the second filter removed all points lying within
20 m radius of each other (Figure 2(c)). The resultant
points were saved in the database along their id, longi-
tude, latitude, time, and calculated time.
Whereas the analysis of raw trajectory revealed that sur-
vey points were not completely lying on the route line
and it needed to be aligned with road network. The
4 M. B. KHALID ET AL.: SPATIO-TEMPORAL NETWORK-CONSTRAINED TRAJECTORY DATA MODEL AND SERVICE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT
Figure 4: Spatial data and efficiency assessment
alignment process of GPS Survey points with road net-
work is called map matching. Map matching is a funda-
mental pre-processing step for many trajectory-based
applications, such as moving object management, traffic
flow analysis, and driving directions [14]. So, to over-
come this problem, snapping algorithm is designed that
helps to snap all points on the line. In this algorithm,
line slope was calculated for route data. Then the dis-
tance of each survey points was calculated from line
nodes and the survey point was snapped to line node
having minimum distance between 0 and 1 (Figure 2
(d)). As a final output, we have a sample point table with
sample point ID, latitude (X), longitude (Y), time, dis-
tance between successive points, and time difference
between successive points (Figure 1).
3. ANALYSIS
After complete data processing, it was ready to calculate
the delay time to analyse the service efficiency. The qual-
ity of public transport is determined by many aspects,
such as availability, comfort, travel time, and cost. Reli-
ability of travel time has become increasingly important
over the last decade [15,16]. Nowadays, in the majority
of the cities, chronic traffic jam happens and traffic con-
gestions lose billions of hours and money [7,17]. Figure 3
shows the plot of all six trajectories against the scheduled
trajectory. It shows that each trajectory has a different
temporal behaviour with respect to scheduled time, and
overall, there is a delay in bus service ever.
To evaluate the efficiency of route, three types of delay
are calculated, namely stops delay, path repeated delay
(PRD), and path simple delay (PSD).
To calculate stops delay, 200-m radius buffer was gener-
ated on all 11 stops on the route in database. Time dif-
ference of all survey points lying within buffer zone was
accumulated and subtracted from a threshold value of
15 seconds (the proposed time for each stop to pick and
drop). The resultant time was considered to be extra
time spent on each stop. As an analysis of six trajectories
stops, “B”, “F”, and “C” are more critical. On stop “B”,
the average delay is 29 seconds; on stop “F”, the average
delay is 26 seconds; and on stop “C”, the average delay is
23 seconds. As both stops “B” and “C” lie within the
campus apart from the main road, but due to more
number of students, delay in bus departure is caused.
While on Stop “F”, the number of lanes is reduced due
to road turnings and fly overs. As a result, bottleneck is
being created in this area resulting in traffic problems.
Second, the PSD was calculated on the basis of GPS sur-
vey points. Time difference between all successive survey
points was calculated and line segments between those
points were selected, where the time difference was
greater than five seconds. The most critical line segment
was between stops “J” and “K”, where the average delay
is 141 seconds during the week. It is mainly due to the
leaving of main road and entering in a narrow tertiary
road of a congested commercial area. The secondmost
critical line segment is between stops “C”and “D” with
an average delay of 87 seconds.
The third type of delay calculated was PRD. In PRD, sur-
vey points with more than three times repeated maxi-
mum value of time difference between successive survey
points were selected. On each point, a buffer of 100 m
was generated. Time difference of survey points lying
within the buffer zone was accumulated with the most
 M. B. KHALID ET AL.: SPATIO-TEMPORAL NETWORK-CONSTRAINED TRAJECTORY DATA MODEL AND SERVICE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT
repeated maximum value of time difference to identify
route segments with repeated delay time. The most criti-
cal route segments identified was between stops “J” and
“K” with an average time delay of 68.6 seconds. The
other one was between stops “C” and “D” with an aver-
age time delay of 20.4 seconds. While both segments are
main commercial areas along the route. The results of all
three types of delay in terms of critical segments and
stops have been shown in Figure 4.
After delay analysis, an alternate route was identified to
avoid the most critical segment between stops “J” and
“K” as shown in Figure 4. As the alternate route is on
the main one-way road, which may be to further facili-
tate extra commuters along efficient time management.
4. CONCLUSION
This research aims at using spatio-temporal dynamic
data, data modelling techniques, certain data processing
algorithms of data cleaning, map matching, and analysis
for efficiency assessment of transport service in urban
areas. The results calculate the average as well as the total
delay in bus reaching from the origin to the destination,
and identification of areas causing maximum delay.
Analysis reveals practical valuable results for managers
and decision-makers in order to reduce the extra time
spent in a trip by changing route. An alternate route
with an extra mileage of 396 m has been identified to
avoid the maximum delay area and assure the timely
availability of transport service for commuters.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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6 M. B. KHALID ET AL.: SPATIO-TEMPORAL NETWORK-CONSTRAINED TRAJECTORY DATA MODEL AND SERVICE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT

Authors
Muhammad Burhan Khalid received the
MSc degree in remote sensing and GIS
from Punjab University College of Infor-
mation Technology in 2012. He com-
pleted his MPhil RSGIS in 2015 from
Punjab University College of Informa-
tion Technology. At present, he is work-
ing as a software developer in Sw3
Solution. He is also teaching Web Engi-
neering module as a visiting faculty member in Punjab Univer-
sity College of Information Technology. His main interests are
web-based GIS data development and spatial data modelling.
E-mail: Burhan.gis@gmail.com
Muhammad Haris received his BS
(hons) degree in computer science from
Punjab University College of Informa-
tion Technology in 2005, MSc degree in
remote sensing and GIS from Punjab
University College of Information Tech-
nology in 2009. He completed his MPhil
RSGIS in 2012 from Punjab University
College of Information Technology. At
present, he is working as a lecturer in GIS Centre, University
of the Punjab, Lahore Pakistan. His main interests are web-
based Web GIS, spatial data modelling, and social media
networking.
Muhammad Hamid Ch received the master’s degree in
geography from Punjab University in 2000 and MSc degree
in remote sensing and GIS from Punjab University College
of Information Technology in 2003. He completed his
MPhil RSGIS in 2012 from Punjab University College of
Information Technology. At present, he is working as a lec-
turer in GIS Centre, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Paki-
stan. His main interests are digital image processing,
remote–sensing, and spatial data visualization techniques.
E-mail: hamid.ch@pucit.edu.pk
Nida Samad received the MSc degree in
remote sensing and GIS from Punjab
University College of Information Tech-
nology in 2008. She completed his MPhil
RSGIS in 2013 from Punjab University
College of Information Technology. At
present, she is working as a lecturer in
GIS Centre, University of the Punjab,
Lahore, Pakistan. Her main interests are
spatial data modelling, database development, and
geostatistics.
E-mail: nida.samad@pucit.edu.pk

E-mail: haris@pucit.edu.pk

Qudsia Gulzar received the master’s

degree in geography from Punjab Uni-
versity in 1996, and MSc degree in
remote sensing and GIS from Punjab
University College of Information Tech-
nology in 2003. She completed her MPhil
RSGIS in 2012 from Punjab University
College of Information Technology. At
present, she is working as a lecturer in
GIS Centre, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. Her
main interests are GIS applications in urban planning, spatial
data modelling, and spatial data visualization techniques.

E-mail: qudsia@pucit.edu.pk