diploma thesis: routing in consideration of the traffic density

General talk
1

Hello,

I would like to write a diploma thesis about routing in consideration of the traffic density.
For this i thought to use openstreetmap as the database for the geographical information and as the database to analyse the
traffic density.

In a nutshell: I will analyse the diffenent gps-tracks between nodes to calculate the average time the persons
need from one node to the other dependent of the time of day. For example: there is a person who needs
30 min from node A to node B at 17 o’clock. Another person needs for the same distance 20 min at 17:20. In the routing program
i will start to travel at 16 o’clock so the routing software calculates that i reach the lane A-B at 17:10.
Now the routing software interpolates the time costs from 17:00 and 17:20 and get a time cost about 25 min.

Now i have two questions about openstreetmap, and i hope anybody can anwer this:

  1. Though the api it’s possible to get all the gps-tracks for a region. The tracks contains lon and lat, but no
    time information when the trackpoints were generated from the gps-receiver. I need the time information to
    calculate the time costs, is it possible to get them in some way?

  2. In openstreetmap will the gps-tracks be stored permanently, or will they removed when the region is complete mapped and there is no
    more use for them?

Thank’s for help

Greetings,

Stefan

2

You can download the raw tracks (with timestamps) and search by tag.

Personally, I don’t think the tracks are going to be very good for your purpose for three reasons:

  • Mappers move probably slower when trying to map an area.
  • You don’t know how a mapper traveled, they can drive on a road by car or on a bicycle, but unless you know the physical and traffic density beforehand you won’t be able to tell for sure what made the track.
  • Also tracks can be old and not represent the current traffic flow

But that’s something you can study in your thesis.

3

First thanks for your help and your personal opinion

Yes, but i think that can be filtered with vehicel characteristics, for example speed maximas or ways that can’t pass by a car.

Yes, i have to study how fast the traffic flow changes in the past years.

4

Well, if those are no show stoppers for you then hope you will be able a succeed and deliver a useful thesis. Will you report back e.g. when finished? Anyway, good luck!