2015 IEEE International Conference on Smart City/SocialCom/SustainCom together with DataCom 2015 and SC2 2015

Enabling Technology for Smart City Transportation

in Developing Countries
Thaw Tar Thein Zan Lounell Bahoy Gueta Toshio Okochi
Research & Development Center Research & Development Center Center for Technology Innovation
Hitachi Asia Ltd. Hitachi Asia Ltd. Hitachi, Ltd.
Singapore, Singapore Singapore, Singapore Tokyo, Japan
tttzan@has.hitachi.com.sg lbgueta@has.hitachi.com.sg toshio.okochi.gj@hitachi.com

Abstract—Traffic in the major cities of developing countries
such as the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh cities is chaotic because
multiple transport modes such as cars, buses, motorbikes, and
bicycles share the same road lanes together with narrow road
infrastructure. In addition, traffic is poorly managed due to lack
of efficient traffic-management system. These problems have
accumulated with the increase in mobility demand because of
rising urban population. The objectives of this study are to
propose a solution to mitigate traffic-congestion problem, to
provide better driving and commuting experience to commuters,
and to assist in the implementation of efficient transportation-
management system in the Hanoi city. This paper presents data-
monitoring and analysis tools to enable smart mobility
capability; adaptive traffic signaling that is the scheduling of
traffic light timing based on road capacity and congestion
indicator. We propose three congestion indicators: stop count,
velocity, and travel-time variation, which represent the state of
congestion at individual road segment.
developing urban transportation infrastructure such as Mass
Rapid Transit (MRT) system. Smart city is the theme of current
city development program all over the world. The goal of this
research is to bridge the gap between the current technological
advancement and the infrastructure of developing countries. To
establish the foundation for smart city development in the
developing countries, this research measures and analyzes
transportation-related data and proposes solutions that support
sustainable transportation infrastructure. The research goal is to
understand transport issues, the cause of traffic jams, and to
propose solution(s) to avoid them. Specifically, the objective is
to analyze the data collected in Hanoi in March 2014. The
analysis result will be the basis to propose solution(s) that will
benefit the riding public of Vietnam.

Index Terms—Traffic-congestion estimation, stop count,

velocity variation, travel-time variation, CUSUM change
detection.

I. INTRODUCTION
The city population is dramatically increasing due to
urbanization, especially in the developing countries. According
to UN World Urbanization Prospects report [1] in 2014, city
population constitutes 54% of the world population. Vietnam is
a developing nation in South East Asia (SEA) and the
population of its two major cities Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh are
6.4 million and 7.1 million, respectively. The rise in population
has led to an increase in the need for transportation facilities.
In addition, personalized motorized traffic is common in
Vietnam with 85% of transport mode share being contributed Fig. 1. Unmanaged traffic flow in Vietnam
by motorbikes. Moreover, traffic-flow management is
undeveloped, as buses, cars, and motorbikes share the same Conventional data collection in transport research uses
road lanes. This is worsened by the absence of proper flow survey form [2][3] to collect the trip-activity data such as
control of vehicles, especially at intersections (see Fig. 1). In origin, destination, and mode of transport or surveillance and
this figure, traffic builds up not only on the side streets of the traffic camera [4] to collect the traffic information. With the
crossing but also at the crossing center. This effectively leads proliferation of smartphones and development of smartphone-
to narrowing of streets from multiple lanes to becoming single- sensing technology, smartphone-based data collection is
lane only. It both slows down traffic movement and is prone to gaining popularity [5][6][7][8][9]. Smartphones equipped with
road accidents. GPS and other sensors such as accelerometer, magnetometer,
Therefore, it is important to develop an efficient and and gyroscope provide new opportunity for location-based
sustainable transportation-management system in addition to services and traffic-state estimation. While commuting on
vehicles, these phones can be used as probe tools to measure

978-1-5090-1893-2/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 170

DOI 10.1109/SmartCity.2015.66
the location, velocity, and acceleration. This paper presents a
method to measure and analyze the traffic condition through
android application and data-analysis tools. A new method is
used to incorporate the traffic-congestion estimation from
acceleration data into adaptive traffic timing. Cumulative Sum
(CUSUM) change detection method is used to detect the
deceleration.
II. DATA-COLLECTION EXPERIMENT
Hitachi Ltd (Hitachi) and Hitachi Asia Ltd (HAS) have
collaborated with Vietnam National University to conduct
transport-related experiment in Vietnam. Prior to the
experiment, a smartphone application is installed on the users'
smartphone and the data were gathered when the user activates
the application. It was developed by Hitachi and modified by
HAS. The complete dataset gathered in the Hanoi city
comprises GPS, accelerometer, and trip data for 4,927 trips
made by 144 users within a period of 3 weeks.
For each trip, the origin and destination locations were
captured by the app and the users input the trip purpose and
travel mode. The collected data includes social demographic
and trip-activity data. The social demographic data comprises
gender, age, occupation, social status, household size, and
house and vehicle ownership. For trip-activity data, two
categories of data, trip information and sensor data, are
recorded. The trip information includes trip profile, the travel
mode, and trip purpose. The trip profile contains the origin and
destination of a trip, its location as well as the time when a
subject started the trip, and when she/he has reached a
destination. The travel mode is updated every time the user
changes the mode. The sensor data contains the details of a
particular trip such as GPS traces from origin to destination,
accelerometer data, and battery percentage of the phone and are
collected as long as Trip-Activity Diary (TAD) is running.
TABLE 1. COLLECTED DATA
Data Type Categories Data Description
Personal Name, age, gender, civil
information status, occupation
Subject profile
Transport-related Car ownership, motorbike
attributes ownership, residence type
Origin, destination, trip
Main trips
purpose, location, and time
Trip profile
Transportation mode,
Trip changes
location, and time
Location position GPS location, time
Sensor data
Speed, location
Accelerometer
change
Table 1 summarizes the data collected using smartphones.
The information of subject profile is used to characterize the
sampled population in the experiment. The social demographic
data covers diverse group of subjects such as student, engineer,
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staff, and freelancer. In contrast to the conventional travel
survey data, this dataset contains high-resolution data that
include origin-destination (OD) data, trip count, trip purpose,
and travel mode. Trip-activity and social demographic data are
analyzed to extract the trip-making pattern of the commuters
whereas sensor data such as acceleration and GPS are used to
estimate the traffic-congestion level along the road.
Fig. 2 shows the trip purpose and mode share of experimental
dataset. Motorbike (M1) contributes 81% of transport mode.
The trip count by bike and bus are comparable. Subjects tend to
take bus mainly for home and work while ride bike to home
and school. Homebound trips (P1) made up 33% of trip
purpose and trip count for going to school, for eating, and other
purposes are comparable with one another.
M2 M8
M1
81%
P1
P2
P8
Legend
Mode
M1 – Motorbike M2 – Bike M3 – Bus
M4 – Walking M5 – Car M6 – Taxi
M7 – Other M8 – Still
Purpose
P1 – Home P2 – Other P3 – School
P4 – Eat P5 – Work P6 – Entertainment
P7 – Business P8 – Shopping
Fig. 2. Trip purpose and transport mode distribution of experimental dataset
III. DATA ANALYSIS FOR TRAFFIC-CONGESTION ESTIMATION
The proposed method employs the commuters' smartphone
to estimate traffic congestion. The acceleration and braking are
detected algorithmically by using open source statistical
computing and graphic software, namely R[10]. To do that, the
data are first collected by using android application, TAD
installed on the commuters' smartphone. The data are then sent
to the central server through the data connection if Wi-Fi is not
available. The program checks if the smartphone is connected
to power source and Wi-Fi connection is available. If both
conditions are met, the data are transmitted automatically to the
server. If not, the data are kept in the device and transmitted
when the user initiates the data transmission. The collected
data are then analyzed to detect events like congestion from
frequent braking activities, velocity, and travel-time variation.
The information is useful to notify the drivers of the traffic
condition and send driving recommendation so that they will
be able to make well-informed decisions. The goal of this
research is to utilize sensor infrastructure to understand and Filter
Histogramize
Select
improve traffic condition and road safety via the Velocity from time
velocity data median
dataset period to time
implementation-adaptive traffic light timing in a motorbike- by link velocity
perid+1
dominant city like the Hanoi city.
(a)

A. Stop Count Velocity Level

Stop count is a measure of the number of occurrences of GPS full GPS data sub set Velocity Bin of Time Period
idling made by trip-makers. Idling is as an instance when a dataset of Link ID Time period
vehicle is not in motion but its engine is running. In this paper, Time Period +1
the frequency of these instances is regarded as critical in
GPS data sub set Velocity Bin of
congestion estimation. of Link ID +1 Time period +1
Time Period +2

Acceleration data in forward direction Time Period +3

GPS data sub set Velocity Bin of
of Link ID +2 Time period +2

Set CUSUM target

Compute CUSUM value
Set pre-determined control parameter
Declare stop if CUSUM value is higher than control parameter
Fig. 3. CUSUM change detection for stop count
In this paper, a method is proposed to derive the number of
stop each trip maker is making during every leg of the trip. The
stop is characterized by a slow deceleration followed by a
sudden acceleration as shown in Fig. 3. Therefore, CUSUM
change detection is suitable for detecting such a phenomenon.
Rather than averaging the signal amplitude, CUSUM observes
the accumulation of acceleration and determines if acceleration
increases or decreases. First, forward acceleration data are
retrieved. The data are then divided into smaller blocks. There
are three variables necessary in CUSUM method: CUSUM
value, CUSUM target, and CUSUM control parameter.
CUSUM value is the cumulative sum of the difference between
the averaged mean and the CUSUM target. CUSUM target is
the median of acceleration data and determines if the data is in
or out of bound. CUSUM control parameter is σN where N is a
desired number and σ is the standard deviation of averaged
mean. Any CUSUM value higher than CUSUM target or lower
than negative CUSUM target is regarded as a change. These
changes accumulate over time. When CUSUM value reaches
the CUSUM control parameter, it is flagged as a stop. The
performance of CUSUM is governed by sensitivity and
accuracy. Larger control parameter not only reduces false
detection but also reduces the sensitivity of detection, while
smaller one improves the sensitivity with the price of
increasing false positive.
(b)
Fig. 4. Creating basic velocity profile
B. Velocity Variation
Another parameter that can assist in estimating traffic
condition is velocity variation. This section provides the
traffic-data analysis to derive velocity variation from GPS data.
Fig. 4 illustrates the basic steps to profile velocity variation. As
shown in Fig. 4, the GPS full dataset is used as the source for
the input velocity data. To be more specific, the velocity
information is derived from GPS data, which is calculated
based on the Doppler Effect. It is used in this report as it is
shown to be more accurate than the velocity derived from the
measurements of two consecutive GPS data.
The velocity dataset is filtered by link IDs. For each link
ID, the GPS data are ordered based on their timestamps. Then,
histograms of velocities are created for specified time period.
For each set of bins in the histogram, a median velocity is
selected to represent the velocity level.
In representing the velocity level, a median value is
selected over mean to eliminate data outliers. In the context of
traffic, these outliers may exist such as unnecessary breaking of
a motorbike, bus idling at the stop for alighting passengers, or
individual trip. These instances can be considered spurious to
represent close-to-reality velocity levels, which are eliminated
by selecting only median value.
As mentioned, Fig. 4 provides a basic velocity profile. This
process can be further extended to create more targeted
profiling of velocities such as:
• Individual profile, which is realized by filtering trip-
maker’s identification
• Population segment profile, which is made by filtering
only selected population samples by gender,
occupation, or age range
• Day-of-the-week profile, which is realized by filtering
GPS data only with timestamps associated with a
particular day of the week

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 The individual and population velocity profile are
important to represent traffic perceptions because it targets on
travel experience made by an individual or a specific
population segment. The Day-of-the-Week velocity profile is
useful in monitoring traffic fluctuations on specific days such
as Mondays versus Fridays, or Weekdays against Weekends.
The process illustrated in Fig. 4 was carried out in all GPS
data for all applicable links of the network model of the Hanoi
city.
C. Travel-time variation
Logically, the traveled time can be separated into two parts:
the idling time and the actual running time when a vehicle is in
motion. Comparing their two values such as in the form of their
ratio can give a more accurate picture of traffic condition in
contrast to monitoring only the traveled time. However, any
traveler may not perceive in this manner. She/he may perceive
the idling time duration at one instance or other instances. For a
time-controlled traffic such as intersections with traffic-light
control, the traffic-light cycle time is constant for a time period.
In normal case, this cycle time is varied at specific peak-hour
periods. In the worst case, it is changed variably depending on
the current traffic condition. For developing cities, where
improvement of traffic-control infrastructure is needed, it can
be assumed that the cycle time is constant or is changed at
specific periods.
Assuming that the idling time duration is constant, the
frequency of idling instances (i.e., stop count) is a practical
measure of a traffic perception. The stop count is intuitive.
First, it can be proportional to the idling time based on the
assumption. Moreover, based on the above narrative, if a trip-
maker wants to avoid a perceived time loss due to idling or
queuing, she/he will try to lower the number of times it stops or
idles by avoiding the road with traffic congestion. Regardless
of the actual traveled distance, she/he will try to find routes
with minimal waiting times or minimal number of idling
instances. In this paper, the travel time of a particular road
segment is derived from GPS and time information collected
using TAD.
IV. APPLICATION OF THE PROPOSED METHODS ON THE HANOI
CITY DATASET
To illustrate, one area with high-GPS concentration and
within the city area is shown in Fig. 5. In Fig. 5, the blue and
red arrows depict the traffic flow direction of the street.
Congestion indicators are calculated for link ID 2, which is
indicated by red arrow.
The stop-counting method is applied on the data collected
during the Hanoi city’s experiment. The sensor data
corresponding to the selected link were processed to detect the
stop count during different times of the day. Fig. 6 depicts the
stop count of motorists of that particular link. The observed
stop count is between 50 and 60 per minute during morning
peak hours and between 20 and 30 per minute during evening
peak hours within the city area and the frequency reduces
during non-peak hours.
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1
2
© OpenStreetMap Contributors
Fig. 5. Selected street with high GPS concentration
Similarly, velocity-estimation method is applied on the
Hanoi city dataset. Fig. 7 is the calculated velocity profiles for
the two traffic flows for a 1-day period. Fig. 7 corresponds to
the traffic flow going into the city. The velocity levels dip at
two instances at 8-9 AM and 3-4 PM, which can be considered
as rush hours in going to work or school and going back to
home from school, respectively, since most of the subjects are
students or school workers.
70
60
50
Stop Count
40
30
20
10
0
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Hour
Fig. 6. Stop count of Ton Duc Thang street in the Hanoi city
From 6 to 9 PM, the traffic is slow, moving at 20 KPH.
This is the time when traveling public are returning home, or
going out for dining. Furthermore, it can be observed that the
traffic flow is lightest in both directions from 1 to 2 PM, which
is early afternoon, and from 9 to 12 PM, when most have
already returned home.
Similarly, travel-time estimation method is applied on the
Hanoi city dataset. Fig. 8 shows the average time the commuter
spent in the street throughout the day. The average time spent
during the peak hours is longer than that during off-peak hours.
Some of the times spent in early morning were zero because
there was no trip made during those hours. This could be due to
error in time-tagged GPS data together with very small sample
set that makes the time spent close to zero.
 40
30
Speed (KPH)
20
10
0
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Time of the Day (Hour)
Fig. 7. Observed velocity profiles of Ton Duc Thang street in the Hanoi city
From the obtained results, it can be seen that the traffic
congestion of personalized vehicle dominant city can be
derived from the stop count, velocity, and travel time.
60
50
Travel Time (Sceond)
40
30
20
10
0 [3] R. W. Lyles, M. A. Siddiqui, N. Buch, W. C. Taylor, S. W. Haider, G.
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Time of the Day (Hour)
Fig. 8. Average time spent in Ton Duc Thang street in the Hanoi city
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
Our technology collects personal-level data and estimates
the transportation necessity. Smartphone is the device that
connects people and their mobility pattern in multimodal
transportation system. This research focuses on developing
algorithms to mitigate the traffic congestion through the
implementation of adaptive traffic light timing. The goal of
these analyses is to assist the implementation of adaptive
schedule by using traffic-congestion indicator from 3-axis
acceleration. These analyses include stop count, velocity
variation, and travel-time variation throughout the day. In this
research, we applied signal-analysis method on smartphone’s
sensor data to extract features such as stop count, velocity
variation and travel time variation of commuters riding
motorbikes. The results show that smartphone-based data
collection and analysis is promising and is the basic method for
the implementation of smart mobility in a developing country.
Some of the issues that should be considered in future
implementations include sensor orientation and inconsistency
in sensing technology. Sensor orientation is an issue in
smartphone-based data-collection approach where sensors are
placed arbitrarily; the device has to be re-oriented to a
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reference orientation. Therefore, if there is error in orientation
estimation and re-orientation, the accuracy of our algorithms
will be affected. Second, our experiment is carried out by
recruiting commuters in the Hanoi city and by installing TAD
application on commuters’ smartphone. The commuters use
different brands and models of smartphones, which results in
inconsistency in the collected data. Sensor orientation issue can
be solved by detecting and virtually reorienting the device
during data collection, and inconsistency in sensing technology
may be solved by algorithmically calibrating the smartphone to
a reference mode. These issues will be resolved in our future
implementations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research is part of the collaboration between Hitachi,
HAS, and Vietnam National University (University of
Engineering and Technology) (VNU-UET). The authors thank
Hitachi Ltd for funding collaborative research activities and
VNU-UET for supporting data-collection experiments and
organizing workshops in Vietnam.
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