scholarly journals An Improved Healthcare Accessibility Measure Considering the Temporal Dimension and Population Demand of Different Ages

Author(s):  
Lan Ma ◽  
Nianxue Luo ◽  
Taili Wan ◽  
Chunchun Hu ◽  
Mingjun Peng

Healthcare accessibility has become an issue of social equity. An accurate estimation of existing healthcare accessibility is vital to plan and allocate health resources. Healthcare capacity, population demand, and geographic impedance are three essential factors to measure spatial accessibility. Additionally, geographic impedance is usually represented with a function of travel time. In this paper, the three-step floating catchment area (3SFCA) method is improved from the perspectives of the temporal dimension and population demand. Specifically, the travel time from the population location to the service site is precisely calculated by introducing real-time traffic conditions instead of utilizing empirical speed in previous studies. Additionally, with the utilization of real-time traffic, a dynamic result of healthcare accessibility is derived during different time periods. In addition, since the medical needs of the elderly are higher than that of the young, a demand weight index of demand is introduced to adjust the population demand. A case study of healthcare accessibility in Wuhan shows that the proposed method is effective to measure healthcare accessibility during different time periods. The spatial accessibility disparities of communities and crowdedness of hospitals are identified as an important reference for the balance between the supply and demand of medical resources.

Author(s):  
Qibin Zhou ◽  
Qingang Su ◽  
Dingyu Yang

Real-time traffic estimation focuses on predicting the travel time of one travel path, which is capable of helping drivers selecting an appropriate or favor path. Statistical analysis or neural network approaches have been explored to predict the travel time on a massive volume of traffic data. These methods need to be updated when the traffic varies frequently, which incurs tremendous overhead. We build a system RealTER⁢e⁢a⁢l⁢T⁢E, implemented on a popular and open source streaming system StormS⁢t⁢o⁢r⁢m to quickly deal with high speed trajectory data. In RealTER⁢e⁢a⁢l⁢T⁢E, we propose a locality-sensitive partition and deployment algorithm for a large road network. A histogram estimation approach is adopted to predict the traffic. This approach is general and able to be incremental updated in parallel. Extensive experiments are conducted on six real road networks and the results illustrate RealTE achieves higher throughput and lower prediction error than existing methods. The runtime of a traffic estimation is less than 11 seconds over a large road network and it takes only 619619 microseconds for model updates.


Author(s):  
Zhongxiang Wang ◽  
Masoud Hamedi ◽  
Elham Sharifi ◽  
Stanley Young

Crowd sourced GPS probe data have become a major source of real-time traffic information applications. In addition to traditional traveler advisory systems such as dynamic message signs (DMS) and 511 systems, probe data are being used for automatic incident detection, integrated corridor management (ICM), end of queue warning systems, and mobility-related smartphone applications. Several private sector vendors offer minute by minute network-wide travel time and speed probe data. The quality of such data in terms of deviation of the reported travel time and speeds from ground-truth has been extensively studied in recent years, and as a result concerns over the accuracy of probe data have mostly faded away. However, the latency of probe data—defined as the lag between the time at which disturbance in traffic speed is reported in the outsourced data feed, and the time at which the traffic is perturbed—has become a subject of interest. The extent of latency of probe data for real-time applications is critical, so it is important to have a good understanding of the amount of latency and its influencing factors. This paper uses high-quality independent Bluetooth/Wi-Fi re-identification data collected on multiple freeway segments in three different states, to measure the latency of the vehicle probe data provided by three major vendors. The statistical distribution of the latency and its sensitivity to speed slowdown and recovery periods are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roozbeh Mohammadi ◽  
Amir Golroo ◽  
Mahdieh Hasani

In populated cities with high traffic congestion, traffic information may play a key role in choosing the fastest route between origins and destinations, thus saving travel time. Several research studies investigated the effect of traffic information on travel time. However, little attention has been given to the effect of traffic information on travel time according to trip distance. This paper aims to investigate the relation between real-time traffic information dissemination and travel time reduction for medium-distance trips. To examine this relation, a methodology is applied to compare travel times of two types of vehicle, with and without traffic information, travelling between an origin and a destination employing probe vehicles. A real case study in the metropolitan city of Tehran, the capital of Iran, is applied to test the methodology. There is no significant statistical evidence to prove that traffic information would have a significant impact on travel time reduction in a medium-distance trip according to the case study.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Zhiguang Liu ◽  
Tomio Miwa ◽  
Weiliang Zeng ◽  
Michael G. H. Bell ◽  
Takayuki Morikawa

Shared autonomous taxi systems (SATS) are being regarded as a promising means of improving travel flexibility. Each shared autonomous taxi (SAT) requires very precise traffic information to independently and accurately select its route. In this study, taxis were replaced with ride-sharing autonomous vehicles, and the potential benefits of utilizing collected travel-time information for path finding in the new taxi system examined. Specifically, four categories of available SATs for every taxi request were considered: currently empty, expected-empty, currently sharable, and expected-sharable. Two simulation scenarios—one based on historical traffic information and the other based on real-time traffic information—were developed to examine the performance of information use in a SATS. Interestingly, in the historical traffic information-based scenario, the mean travel time for taxi requests and private vehicle users decreased significantly in the first several simulation days and then remained stable as the number of simulation days increased. Conversely, in the real-time information-based scenario, the mean travel time was constant. As the SAT fleet size increased, the total travel time for taxi requests significantly decreased, and convergence occurred earlier in the historical information-based scenario. The results demonstrate that historical traffic information is better than real-time traffic information for path finding in SATS.


Author(s):  
Vasileios Zeimpekis

Effective travel time prediction is of great importance for efficient real-time management of freight deliveries, especially in urban networks. This is due to the need for dynamic handling of unexpected events, which is an important factor for successful completion of a delivery schedule in a predefined time period. This chapter discusses the prediction results generated by two travel time estimation methods that use historical and real-time data respectively. The first method follows the k-nn model, which relies on the non-parametric regression method, whereas the second one relies on an interpolation scheme which is employed during the transmission of real-time traffic data in fixed intervals. The study focuses on exploring the interaction of factors that affect prediction accuracy by modelling both prediction methods. The data employed are provided by real-life scenarios of a freight carrier and the experiments follow a 2-level full factorial design approach.


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