Authors' Names
Moines El Shafey
M. A. Nasimudheen
AL HADY - DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR VEHICLE ROUTINGAL HADY - DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR VEHICLE ROUTING
ABSTRACT
Can high school students use powerful Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies to better
better understand and help improve their communities while at the same time developing technology
knowledge and skills? How can GIS resources and technology have their greatest impact on educational
services? How can students use GIS to understand their community, be involved in improving it, and
have influence on the decisions that affect their community's future? How can GIS be integrated with
actual school systems? Al Hady, Vehicle Routing Application, answered these questions. Unlike other
GIS projects in State of Qatar, Al Hady aimed not only to use GIS to improve managing one of the
facilities but also to introduce GIS concepts and skills to high school students through positive
involvement in an actual GIS application.
This paper explains the concept and implementation of Al Hady, Vehicle Routing Application. The
problem is a typical many-to-many Traveling Salesman Problem with route constraints, vehicle
capacity constraints and traveling time constraints. Al Hady customized and enhanced ArcView
Network Analyst’s capabilities to produce optimum routes for the buses used in the schools. Also, it
presents the experience we gain from the active participation of a high school students in a real GIS
application.
BACKGROUND
In State of Qatar, education in schools is in three tiers i.e. Elementary, Primary and Secondary.
transportation facility is provided to all students. A variety of buses, different types and capacities, are
used for transporting students to schools and back. On an average there are eight buses associated with
every school. Now a days, most of the families are sending their children by buses because houses are
spread out than before and Ministry of Education (MOE) has to meet this growing demand by either
buy or rent new buses. Optimizing the cost of operations is not available because each school has to
find, manually, the best route for each bus based on student addresses and bus capacity. To handle any
changes in the pick up & drop off point manually, sometimes on a daily basis, is not an easy task.
Automating the routing decisions is the solution in order to maximize the potential use of each bus,
minimize costs, and provide a more effective method of reallocating routes due to emergencies.
OBJECTIVES
By getting students involved with community organizations which use GIS we are helping them realize
that they can make a difference in their communities. What better way to introduce students to GIS than
to have them participate in the development of a GIS application of direct benefit to them and their
schools. So why not enlist students to help develop a Decision Support System for Vehicle Routing for
Qatar in order to:
1- maximize the use of the existing buses allocated to each school.
2- minimize the overall cost of transporting the students.
3- provide a quick way of creating alternative bus routes for the remaining buses in the event
of bus breakdown or driver absence.
4- ensure student pickup and drop-off points are conveniently and safely located for students.
5- ensure all students have a seat on the bus.
6- ensure no student is on the bus for more than 30 minutes.
7- ensure students arrive at school on time.
The Decision Support System for School Vehicle Routing has been appropriately named "Al Hady"
which in English means a "Pathfinder".
RECIPIENTS
Two schools namely Khalid Bin Al Waleed Model School (located in Doha municipality) and Al
Rayyan Al Jaddid Boys Elementary Preparatory School (located in Al Rayyan municipality) were
selected as a prototype for vehicle routing application. The Catchment area of Al Rayyan Al Jaddid
School is larger and address data such as street name, building number scarcely exist. One of the
solutions for this problem is the use of GPS to generate the coordinates of every pick up & drop of
point on the existing school bus routes in the street map.
AL HADY
Al Hady, a GIS Network Analysis focus project is developed by the Centre for Geographic
Information System (CGIS) and GIS unit of Ministry of Education(MOE). It is a nine-month project in
which high school students explore the uses of GIS. The objective of the project is not only to develop
a bus routing application but also to explore that high school students can incorporate in an actual GIS
applications. Eight students from different high schools, selected by MOE, were trained for two
months. ArcView and its related applications were the core of the course. Also, different coverage such
as schools, roads and urban were presented. From among all the potentially interesting applications that
could be undertaken, Al Hady introduced GIS technology from different perspectives to the most
engaging and promising students in high school in order to powerfully enhance other students learning
and motivation to such a technology. Part of our work is to identify the software packages, data
sources, and GIS-related application that are most valuable and appropriate for use in Al Hady. CGIS
provides software, hardware and data that are required for this project. In such an environment,
everything is available and planned ahead. The software providers assume sophisticated users who
willing to use and learn how to use the software. These conditions, of course, will not hold in school
settings. Therefore, in planning for school use we decided to make a significant simplification of the
interface and of access to data. We have made substantial progress in adapting and simplifying
ArcView tools for use by less sophisticated users, such as students and teachers.
SALIENT FEATURES OF APPLICATION
The application works in the form of a wizard which takes the user through a set of easy steps and at the
end efficient bus routes are generated. At every stage data validation and checks are done in order to ensure
that only valid data is entered and no inconsistencies are resulted. Interface is provided using Visual Basic
and Map Object.
* Generates routes to handle many-to-many situations.
Most of the real life routing situations involve many-to-many situations where many vehicles
are serving many demand points. Typically in these situations two decisions are to be made
i. e. The demand points to be served by each vehicle and
The sequence of visiting demand points
ArcView Network Analyst handles only one-to-many situations. Al Hady has customized
ArcView Network Analyst in order to handle many-to-many situations.
* Routes can be generated based on Least Cost or Shortest Path criteria
* Buses of different capacities are used for transporting students. The number of students in the
buses are not allowed to exceed their capacities
* User friendly interface for digitizing drop off/ pick up points:
Stops can be digitized from GPS data. A user friendly interface for digitizing stops with map
interface with editing capability is provided.
* Route constrains are taken care of
Closed roads and one way roads are all taken care of.
Turn impedance and traversing costs are also included.
DATA COLLECTION
Students quickly learned what elements of infrastructure (e.g., roads, power plants, electric distribution
grids) had to be in place as preconditions for habitation and growth. They also were quick to pick up the
idea that a city consists of and requires differentiated kinds of activities industrial, commercial,
residential. We found that their ability to engage with and make sense of spatial information depended,
in part, on the way the information was presented visually. As an example, it seemed that orthoimage
were more engaging and easier to understand, at least initially, when they employed a rout as well as
tracing connections between elements, such as the intersections in a certain zone rather than an urban
view of the ground. The students found paper street maps useful for locating traffic signs. These are the
four sets of information that has been collected for the two schools
1- Student Data
Student names, ID numbers, Addresses and Telephone numbers are collected from the schools.
2- Traffic Data
Four maps for the Catchment area of the School was created. Two student collected the required
data (Way Roads, Turning Restriction, Number of Lanes, Speed Limits) in three Days.
3- Intersection Data
Thirteen major intersections (Traffic Signals and Roundabouts) are used to collect the average time
taken along with the average number of vehicles crossing each part of it. Two groups of the students
collected these data in seven days.
4- Digitizing the actual route
Four maps of the catchment area of the school was created. Students followed the actual bus routes
and later digitized the routes. In case of Al Rayyan Al Jaddid school digitizing the actual route as
well as the pick up points were done using GPS.
ROUTE WIZARD
Al Hady works in the form of a wizard which takes the user through a set of easy steps and at the end
efficient routes are generated. The steps involved are the following
* Selection of interface (English/Arabic)
* Selection of school. User can select the school either by location or by name.
* Selection of stops file (pick up/ drop off points). At this point user can opt for creating a new file
by using GPS data or on screen digitization. User can also edit the existing stop file.
* Selection of objective i.e. least cost or least distance.
Least distance route need not be the least cost route. Cost information has been collected and
stored in feature attribute tables and turn tables.
* Digitization of road closures/ openings
User can select street and with the click of a button can set the rules of road.
* Selection of buses
* Allocation of drop off/ pick up points to different buses.
This can be done automatically where in a sophisticated algorithm will take care of
efficiently assigning the stops to different buses. User can also manually assign stops to
various buses.
* Generation of routes
CONCLUSION
Results of the application are very encouraging. During test running it could generate routes which
are 33% more efficient than the previous routes. Estimated savings by national level implementation
of the project is US$ 8 Million.
Al Hady Decision Support System for Vehicle Routing is very generic in nature and can be extended
for many similar situations. Examples are garbage collection, network planning, water distribution in
suburbs and commercial goods transfer.
AUTHORS' INFORMATION
Name : Moines El Shafey
Title : Coordinator
Organization : Centre for Geographic Information Systems
Address : P B. No. 22088, Doha, Qatar
Telephone : +974-337572
Fax number : +974-444036
E-mail address : moinese@gisqatar.org.qa
Name : M .A. Nasimudheen
Title : Technologist
Organization : Centre for Geographic Information Systems
Address : P B. No. 22088, Doha, Qatar
Telephone : +974-337572
Fax number : +974-444036
E-mail address : nasim@usa.net