If it materializes, taxi drivers can reduce their time searching for passengers as they easily detect the place where they can take on passengers, and passengers do not need to wait for the taxi by using places they can take taxis easily. (image: Kobizmedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, June 19 (Korea Bizwire) – Not unlike any other big cities, it is hard to hail a taxi cab and get one in Seoul. Especially in some crowed places like Gangnam, Jongro and Sinchon during the late night after midnight, it is literally impossible to take one.
To solve the problem, the Seoul Metropolitan City government will open a public big data in the name of “Taxi Match-making” in order to help search for the places where people can get the taxis most easily.
The “Taxi Match-making” public data analyzes the 30 billion pieces of big data on places where people get on and off the taxi and weather information and searches for the tax-taking spots by dates, time and weather.
Once the city government opens the taxi match-making data in the form of a dataset to the public at its open data site (http://data.seoul.go.kr), Internet portals, navigation providers, or private developers can freely process the data and develop them into websites, mobile apps for the daily usage for the Seoul citizens.
If it materializes, taxi drivers can reduce their time searching for passengers as they easily detect the place where they can take on passengers, and passengers do not need to wait for the taxi by using places they can take taxis easily.
The Seoul city government is already successfully operating nine lines of late-night buses from midnight till 5 am. To select the lines, the city government analyzed 3 billion mobile phone calls during the late night and their locations as big data and finally decided them considering the floating population of Gangnam, Hongdae, Dongdaemun, Shillim and Jongro.
Based its successful application of big data analysis including the “owl buses,” it continuously introduces big data analysis in its policies such as location analysis for leisure facilities for the elderly people.
Now, the city government is planning to build a platform to share and apply big data by pouring out 927 million won to offer useful transportation service by analyzing various big data. Besides the taxi match-making, it will develop various transportation-related services including a scheme to reduce traffic accidents and consulting for the operation of call taxis for the handicapped.
Kim Kyeong-seo, director of the Information System Planning Bureau of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, said, “By developing various transportation services including taxi match-making service, we will present another possibility to settle various problems in the city through big data. By applying big data, we will provide city policies which actually meet the needs of our citizens.”
Written by John Choi (johnchoi@koreabizwire.com)
Technology (Follow us @Technews_Korea)
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