Challenges and Opportunities in Exploiting Large-Scale GPS Probe Data

 Challenges and Opportunities in Exploiting Large-Scale GPS Probe Data Yin Wang, Yanmin Zhu, Zhaocheng He, Yang Yue, Qingquan Li HP Laboratories HPL-2011-109 Transportation; GPS; probe; data analysis; map matching Global positioning system (GPS) receivers are widely deployed in navigation and tracking devices installed in taxis, buses, utility vehicles, and smart phones. These GPS receivers can provide probe data that illuminates automotive traffic conditions for applications including traffic analysis, travel time estimation, map building, and congestion and accident detection. The characteristics of real GPS probe data are not well understood, however, and these characteristics may pose difficulties for existing algorithms. For example, map matching is often a prerequisite for GPS trace-related applications. Existing solutions often rely on assumptions, e.g., Gaussian GPS noise, that are not necessarily true of data collected on metropolitan streets. In this paper, we study probe data from tens of thousands of taxis in the three largest cities in China. We comprehensively characterize the data, quantify noise present in it, gauge the applicability of existing map matching algorithms to the data, identify challenges in processing large-scale GPS data, and suggest research opportunities. External Posting Date: July 21, 2011 [Fulltext] Approved for External Publication Internal Posting Date: July 21, 2011 [Fulltext] Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Challenges and Opportunities in Exploiting Large-Scale GPS Probe Data Yin Wang Hewlett-Packard Labs Palo Alto, CA [email protected] Yanmin Zhu Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China [email protected] Zhaocheng He Sun Yat-Sen University Guangzhou, China [email protected] Yang Yue Wuhan University Wuhan, China [email protected] Qingquan Li Wuhan University Wuhan, China [email protected]