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INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS 

Navigation and GIS are important components of ITS systems. In recent years, under the fund from RGC and the university, the ITS research has become one of the major research areas in the department.

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Selected recent publications

Lu, Ming. Chen, Wu, Chan and W.H. (2004).  Discussion on Building Project Model support for automated labor monitoring, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Oct 2004:381-382.

Mok, Esmond and Shea, Geoffrey (2004).  Geolocation positioning with Wireless Cellular Network in Hong Kong.  The Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors Journal, 15(2):December 2004.

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Recent research Grants

07/04-11/06

Optimal Path Finding Computation with On-Fly Topology from Map Features, RGC, HK$ 348,235.  Lilian PUN (PI) and LI Zhi-lin.

11/03-11/06

Location-based Mobile Service System for Beijing Olympic, CRG, HK$1,300,000.  LI Zhi-lin (PI), CHEN Yong-qi, DING Xiao-li and CHEN Wu.

01/03-06/04

Real Time Parking Inquiry System, CRG, HK$ 243,052.  Baki IZ (PI) and CHEN Yong-qi.

09/02-02/05

Modelling the Routing Pattern of Fashion Shoppers in Planned Shopping Centres - A Decision Support System Using Spatial Networking Algorithms, CRG, HK$ 200,000.  Lilian PUN (PI) and CHU Wai-ching.

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Selected projects on Intelligent Transportation systems

EASYGO: an intelligent public transport query and guiding system

Lilian PUN, Esmond MOK and Geoffrey SHEA

Hong Kong¡¦s public transport system is extremely complicated. Local residents and tourists rely heavily on public transport for everyday travel. To assist people in making better use of the public transport system, a web-based multi-modal public transport query and guiding system, EASYGO, has been developed. This is a collaborative venture between the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Brilliant Technology Development Limited. The system finds optimal travelling routes for users in terms of fewer mode transfers, shortest travelling time and lowest fare. It is designed for mobile phone (Figure 25) and internet connection (Figure 26) so that transport users may plan their travels in advance.  EASYGO is multi-modal, in that it includes all legally run public transport modes throughout the whole territory of Hong Kong and those linking to the neighboring Guangdong townships and cities.  These cover all kinds of mass transits, buses, minibuses, ferries and trams.  The project started in early 2002 and is now commercialized with the collaboration of several telecom companies.  The system has also widely been used among visitors, students and staff via the University campus kiosks and portal system.

Figure 25.  EASYGO guide for Mobile phone users

Figure 26.  The internet interface for EASYGO

Enhanced Simulation Modeling of Ready-Mixed Concreting Operations with ITS/GPS

CHEN Wu and Ming LU

This research is collaborated with the Department of Civil Engineering. Steady growth in population and ambitious plans for urban infrastructure developments and for commercial and residential developments/redevelopments will sustain the heavy demand and usage of RMC in Hong Kong and other major cities in the years to come. The research is to embellish the recent operations simulation study of the Hong Kong¡¦s one-plant-multi-site concreting systems by linking the construction operations simulation models to the intelligent transport information systems, so as to develop a RMC production-delivery-placing simulation platform for the construction industry to (1) enhance the coordination between a RMC plant and the sites, (2) to improve the productivity of the placing operation, and (3) to enhance the efficiency with which sites and the RMC plant are separately managed. In addition, the optimal location planning of central RMC plants within a given construction-transportation geographical area is also explored, such that the total RMC supply cost is minimized while matching the concrete supply by one or multiple RMC plants to the demand  of multiple site contractor clients that carry out concreting construction activities simultaneously. 

Figure 27.  Process of Concrete Transport

Figure 28.  Tracking of Truckmixer

Geolocation positioning with Wireless Cellular Network in Hong Kong

Esmond MOK and Geoffrey SHEA 

Mobile communication has been growing rapidly worldwide, and Hong Kong is no exception. Although mobile positioning technology has many potential applications in Hong Kong, the use of Location-Based Services (LBS) is still at an early stage. Major  concerns are related to its accuracy and reliability. It is believed that LBS platforms now available in Hong Kong can generally provide positional information better than 500m accuracy in the urban area which would be sufficient for various applications such as manpower and fleet management, transportation query and guidance system. This research investigates the accuracy achievement of current LBS in Hong Kong (Figure 29). It was found that the current LBS can generally provide better than 200m accuracy in urban areas (Figure 30), but the positioning error in rural areas (Figure 31) can be as high as 1km.  The trend for LBS in Hong Kong, from the point of view of the authors, will gradually move to the hybrid positioning technique, which is the combination of AGPS and cellular network positioning, to provide high accuracy indoor and outdoor location based services. Future application of LBS technology are only limited by our imagination, and  include manpower and fleet management, travel aids, location identification in case of emergency, and the provision of guidance for visually impaired persons.

Figure 29.  System Design for the LBS accuracy assessment

Figure 30.  Positioning error for urban area: Nathan Road, Kowloon

Figure 31.  Positioning error for rural area: Sai Sha Road