Modal - A platform for mobility analyses using open datasets

Abstract

Cities are becoming smart environments with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). Data from these technologies are stored by various devices spread throughout the city and are available in open data portals, which can be used to improve essential services such as public transport and fed into platforms for visualization and analyses. Human and urban mobility analyses demonstrate that understanding movement patterns can assist governments in city’s decision-making process, as well as improve life quality of citizens. Aiming to enable mobility analysis in different cities, this work presents MODAL platform. This platform replicates mobility analyses and algorithms on databases of different cities using data obtained from open data portals. We assess the platform with a case study performing analyses of the transportation displacement within three different cities using complex network metrics. The results demonstrated the public transportation system efficiency showing regions of Chicago, Dubai and Taichung well served and regions which are key points to the transportation city interconnecting various areas. Moreover, we could evaluate how improved the transportation system would be by adding new lines or new transport system. The analyses demonstrated the platform potential to be used as support decision system for governments, showing the possibility of applying open data to improve city services and facilitate the conduction of analyses on various cities.