The Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Metropolitan Facilities Management Corporation and KAIST announced that they have succeeded in developing an automatic system to manage taxi dispatches for disabled people using big data. (Image : Kobizmedia / Korea Bizwire)
Seoul, July 21 (Korea Bizwire) – The Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Metropolitan Facilities Management Corporation and KAIST announced that they have succeeded in developing an automatic system to manage taxi dispatches for disabled people using big data.
The team looked at 320,000,000 call taxi requests for the disabled accumulated over the past five years.
After analyzing the data, it was discovered that disabled people who called for a taxi had to wait for an average of 30 minutes, and in some cases, up to 90 minutes, due to traffic jams during rush hour.
Under the previous system, operators who received calls dispatched taxis to the caller. With the new system, operators still receive calls, but they have access to data about available cars, nearby cars, and how long each journey should take. The system calculates the optimal taxi to be assigned to each journey, thus ensuring that the car reaches the caller as fast as possible.
Seoul Metropolitan Facilities Management Corporation has been testing the system for the past month, and will start operating the actual service today. During the test period, waiting times were reduced by an average of three minutes.
The team divided the city into 24,000 cells with a 100m radius, and built a statistical data model according to day, time, and trip distance. Using these models, they plan to launch an application for smartphones in September. The app will provide users with information about wait times. Also, with the results of the big data analysis, Seoul Metropolitan Facilities Management Corporation will rearrange drivers’ work schedules, as well as the locations of the garages.
Jeon Ki-sung, the management executive of call taxis for the disabled, was optimistic about the potential advantages of the new system, saying, “With the launch of the mobile application, and the development of the automatic system, we hope that waiting times can be reduced, as that was the thing users complained about the most.”
By Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
