Main navigation | Main content
March 19, 2007
Web services like MapQuest and Google Maps can be helpful in finding fast ways to get from point A to point B. But frustrated commuters know that travel routes can vary greatly in commute time depending on the time of day – especially during rush hour.
“MapQuest doesn’t consider start time options,” said Betsy George, a Computer Science and Engineering doctoral student studying Spatial databases and data mining. “These services are capable of finding the shortest routes, but are unable to predict the start time that would result in the least travel time.”
So, a year ago George decided to seek solutions for this problem as part of her doctoral thesis, working with CSE Professor Shashi Shekhar. Her goal: to study the best start time for commuters using graphs and account for time or “temporal” changes. To do this, George proposed the ‘Time-Aggregated Graph Model’ inspired by the evacuation planning project in the Spatial databases group. This model takes into account temporal variations of travel times.
Her work in this area has already earned George best paper recognition and she’s been invited to submit an expansion of her paper, “Time-Aggregated Graphs for Modeling Spatio-Temporal Networks” for publication in the academic publication, Journal on Semantics and Data.
While she has not explored the market potential for this service as a Web product, George is confident of its potential due to increasing availability of real-time traffic data. “We are just at the tip of the ice berg,” she said.
Please e-mail suggested news and event items to:
