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portation and available public metrics. In section 3
we describe the modular solution proposed to detect
commuters’ real-time location. Section 4 presents the
actual intelligent analysis tasks that are performed to
overcome some of the problems we have faced. In
section 5 we present some related works and their
contributions to the field. In section 6 we summarize
our on-going work for analysing the commuters loca-
tions and state of the Barcelona’s public transporta-
tion network in real-time. Finally, in section 7 we
sketch the next steps that will be taken to improve the
performance of the platform
2 THE PROBLEM: THE LACK OF
REAL-TIME PUBLIC DATA
The optimization of urban processes such as the pub-
lic transportation system has been subject of inter-
est of researchers for many years/for decades (Lynch,
1960; Mandl, 1980; Daganzo, 1997). Some public
transportation networks such as “Transport for Lon-
don” or Seoul metro, have information about the users
entrances and exits controlled through RFID cards
or similar systems, used for optimizing the payment
costs using a “pay-as-you-go” approach. However,
and to the best of our knowledge, there is no existing
infrastructure that provides the load of the network
in real-time. In this paper we sketch the structure of
the architecture that would allow public transportation
users to become active sensors and provide this data
while they travel.
This information is of clear importance to any
public transportation system, as it has been proven
by the numerous costly and time-consuming inter-
views performed to passengers asking about their ori-
gins, destinations, preferred routes and other parame-
ters. Moreover, providing real time information about
the state of the network would increase the aware-
ness of the urban flows within cities through public
transportation systems, and pop up the weakness of
the networks and the behaviours of the commuters in
front of the incidences or big events, amongst many
others.
In this paper, we propose a platform of an integrated
solution that allows the real-time tracking of partici-
pants within the transportation network. To achieve
this task, we rely on the sensing capabilities of pas-
sengers (acquired through their mobile devices such
as smartphones) and the continuous provision of in-
formation. However, we face two problems with this
approach: (1) this sharing implies a cost for the in-
dividual user in terms of battery life and bandwidth
that users are not always willing to sacrifice, and (2)
we need to critical mass of users to obtain signifi-
cant sample of information. The individual voluntary
provision of information (for the intelligent analysis
and process in our platform) would represent a long-
term benefit for the users, despite the associated ana-
lyzed costs. However, battery life is a valued resource
that users are always reluctant to share for communal
goods, therefore, we need to provide short term pos-
itive incentives to motivate humans to provide with
this data. Moreover, we need to ensure that a critical
mass of users will participate providing information.
To ensure both problems we opt for the usage of gam-
ification techniques, translating these incentives into
our platform in terms of a competitive game, that pro-
vides users with distraction during their trips, com-
pensating for the resources consumed, and it is attrac-
tive enough to engage a sufficient amount of users.
As an specific case of study we want to study
the commuting trends of Barcelona, being the com-
muters a representative portion of the users of the pub-
lic transportation networks. Once we obtain real-time
sample data of mobility, we will be able to understand
the commuting trends and urban flows within the city,
and consequently we would be able to analyze the
weak points that can be reached by us to improve the
system. However, this intelligent processing imply
also the creation and usage of a common language
that refers to each of the units of information treated
in this process.
3 FRAMEWORK
ARCHITECTURE
The solution proposed for the cooperative GPS track-
ing in the Barcelona’s public transportation network
is based on the gamification concept to incentivize
users. We defined and developed a game users play
while an underlying application gathers the geoposi-
ton (latitude, longitude and altitude) of the gamers
with the aim of being aware of the Barcelona’s public
transportation usage in a city in real-time. The goal
of the application is the cooperative anonymous real-
time monitorization of the commuters, in the pub-
lic transport network. Commuters seems to be ideal
candidates for this research as they have internalized
the commuting route that they transit everyday, and
their cognitive capabilities can be re-focused on play-
ing our game. While commuters play on their mo-
bile device, they will be competing in real-time with
other players, while sending information to our mo-
bility server. This solution would allow us to track
the whole Barcelona’s public transportation system in
real-time creating an incentive for the commuters to
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