Fleet management systems utilizing GPS and packet cellular phone networks are spreading in Japan. Hitachi started service of a truck fleet management system as an application service provider in April 2001. Truck location data collected with the system are not only used for fleet management of vehicles, but are also very effective in monitoring traffic conditions by regarding trucks as floating cars in traffic information gathering. In this paper, we constructed a traffic information system that provides traffic conditions and travel times of road links when using truck location data as floating car data. We examined the effectiveness of the truck location data as the floating car data using actual data, and confirmed that nearly 90% of the location data were applicable to traffic information estimation. We also developed an arrival time prediction system based on the location data, and made a service application to the fleet management system.
Abstract