Urban Transportation System

This literature discusses about Urban Transport information which uses urban transport ontology. It elaborates upon semantic fusion in ontology level so as to achieve the blend of urban traffic data in the semantic completeness. Information Integration in urban transport can enhance the role of semantic fusion and lessen the amount of data integration of urban traffic data along with increasing the efficiency and integrity of traffic information.

Analysis of traffic information involves two dimensions - 1. The static traffic dimension 2. The Dynamic traffic dimension

Here, the static traffic dimension links traffic information elements into traffic geography with the help of various classification ruleswhereas the Dynamic aspect involves changes in traffic position, traffic control information also, traffic surveillance information. The massive step is to build an ontology from the existing information and how to study and comprehend this information from the ontology[1].

Concept of Ontology has also been introduced and lucidly explained in the paper - "Architecture for intelligent transportation system based in a general traffic ontology"

In this paper it has proposed an approach which provides roadside assistance to drivers gathering assistance and taking decisions it could provide information like weather information traffic status other vehicles in the surrounding etc.

To bring this approach into action the paper has proposed ontology. The system thus enhances the interoperability amongst various systems in a traffic environment

Intelligent Transportation System has ushered new era of safety and inter-operability between software agents hence promoting communication between various entities present in the traffic system, it also enhances safety of the drive[2].

Intelligent System for Road Traffic Management consists of three layers -
1. Query Layer -
2. Reasoning Layer - Used the reasoner pellet in this layer
3. Ontology layer or OWL - Build the ontology in this layer

ONTOLOGY Layer :
"In the ontology layer of the system, an ontology that relates thedifferent road traffic entities has been developed. The ontology was implemented in OWL-RDF language [10] using the protégé tool [3]. "

We have two groups. First one related to vehicles (consists of vehicle taxonomy - "commercial vehicles, public vehicles (bus and taxi), private vehicles (car, bicycle and motorbike) and priority vehicles (ambulances, fire trucksand police cars). Different relationships between vehicles and other entities are defined also in this group. Some of these entities are: location, showing the exact location (latitude and longitude) ofa vehicle, route point or infrastructure item; information about drivers and the vehicle’s types which they can drives by license"[2]. Second one related to infrastructure - "howsthe second group, which organizes the elements related to road infrastructure. In this group the most importantconcept represents the roads, which in Japan are classified as local roads, prefectural roads, national highways and national expressways. [2]. For better management of traffic situations we divided the roads into segments, connected through intersections. Each segment contains lanes, and different signs such as stop signs orspeed control, traffic lights or road markings are in each lane. Each signal has an action associated following the Japanese traffic regulations[2].

Transportation plays an important role in social and economic development. The number of vehicles running on the road is increasing day by day therefore traffic is increasing leading to increased amount of pollution, waste of time and road accidents. This literature proposes a traffic management approach based upon ontologies[4].Here, they have used VANET(Vehicular ADhoc Network) as a medium to transmit information and retrieve messages to ensure proper traffic management[4].

Problems confronted by the traffic sector due to increase in the number of vehicles -
1. Congestion
2. Increase in traffic accidents
3. Pollution in the environment
4. Also affect quality of life of citizens
Intelligent transport system is a probable solution to all these problem.
Concept behind Intelligent Transport System - It promotes communication between vehicles and vehicles and infrastructure using roadside access point. Wireless technology is commonly used to achieve this goal. A driver has fast and reliable access to data stored in the road cloud that has many practical applications. VANET is based on MANET(Mobile Adhoc Networks)[4].Here, each vehicle on the road is equipped with a wireless equipment designed for the purpose of communication between the vehicles and the other vehicles or the infrastructure[4].

There is a literature that proposes an ontology that takes space geographical data, traffic infra data, historical data for XML document. Various entities involved are :1.ontology server2.integrated databases[5]. Drawback here is that it does not include meta data[5].

Author has proposed parking system: Automatic night vision, Collision Detection, Driver Drowsiness[6]. There is a drawback in the proposed model which is - This model does not take meta data into account while constructing the ontology. It should be able to adapt its decisions to the individual needs of the driver[6].