iMOVE bus data study project’s award nominations

An iMOVE project led by Sydney Trains and Transport for NSW, with the research work carried out by the Swinburne University of Technology’s Smart Cities Research Institute, has this week been nominated for two awards.

The project name is Measuring demand for bus replacement services, and it is a finalist in the:

• 2019 ITS Australia National Awards, in the Research category
• 2019 Smart Cities Awards, in the Research and Innovation category

The scope and aims of the project were:

Rail services are at times replaced by bus services due to scheduled track maintenance (planned disruptions), and also due to network incidents (unplanned disruptions). The cost of replacement services for such disruptions is significant.

However, passengers’ use of replacement bus services is difficult to measure as these trips may not be captured by use of travel cards. This leads to the risk of under- or over-procurement of replacement services, as well as limited ability to respond to network demands.

This project seeks to analyse and assess technology and implementation options, leading to efficient and effective services for the benefit of operators and customers.

The project involved the use of various technologies and methods, including cameras, pressure sensor mats, deep neural networks, mobile sensing, and more.

‘The project demonstrated how we can converge meaningful technology with infrastructure and existing assets to provide a better user experience’ said Hussein Dia, Professor of Future Urban Mobility at the Swinburne University of Technology.

‘It’s a response to an important need to identify and trial technologies to count passengers on bus replacement services during train disruptions. The project demonstrated how we can converge meaningful tech, infrastructure and existing assets to provide a better user experience for customers. We were delighted to work with partners who share the same vision and recognise the role of smart technologies in promoting sustainable cities,’ Professor Dia went on to say.

For more information about the project and technologies, here’s a video overview from Swinburne’s Smart Cities Research Institute.

The award winners at the 2019 ITS Australia National Awards are announced on 21 November, and the 2019 Smart City Awards 31 October. We’ll be sure to update this story after those announcements.

It’s been a week of awards-related news this week, with our Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving Safety Study nominated for two awards, and one of our project researchers, Mina Ghanbarikarekani, winning a Best Student Paper award at an international conference.