City Notifications as a Data Source for Traffic Management

A common problem for cities of developing countries like India in managing traffic is the lack of basic automated instrumentation to track road conditions or vehicle locations. Still, to help their citizens make informed travel decisions based on changing city dynamics; many cities have an authorized, city-initiated, notification service in place to alert subscribing commuters about road conditions. Here, alternative means may be used to create informal textual notifications – e.g., inputs from field personnel, citizen updates, and pre-authorized events from city calendar. In this paper, we show that collections of such notifications, when processed with information extraction techniques, can turn them into a rich source of data for traffic managers. Specifically, we use Short Message Service (SMS) notifications from the city of Delhi, India to show promising insights.