Patent ID: 6650948
Filing Date: 2003-11-18
Classification: G08G,H04W

Abstract:
A vehicular traffic flow monitoring method for monitoring vehicular traffic flow in a road network in an area served by a mobile telecommunications device network having a call management system provided with a mobile telecommunications device positioning system providing positional data in respect of at least active mobile telecommunications devices belonging to said mobile telecommunications device network, said method comprising the steps of:a. capturing first geographical positional data for an active mobile telecommunications device in use on a vehicle at a given time t1; b. intersecting said first geographical positional data with road network mapping data defining said road network in terms of road components each representing a discrete part of the road network, so as to identify original possible road components corresponding to said first geographical positional data; c. generating an initial probability vector representing the likelihood of said vehicle having arrived at a position on a given one of said original possible road for all of said original possible road components; d. capturing second geographical positional data for said mobile telecommunications device at a later time t2=t1+&Dgr;t where &Dgr;t is the actual transit time of said device between said first and second geographical positions; e. intersecting said second geographical positional data with said road network mapping data, so as to identify new possible road components corresponding to said second geographical positional data; f. identifying available routes in the road network linking said possible road components corresponding to said first and second geographical positional data which routes are constituted by a series of road components; g. generating an updated probability vector representing the likelihood of said vehicle having arrived at a position on a given one of said new possible road components in the road network corresponding to said second geographical positional data at said later time t2 via one of said available routes, for all of said new possible road components; h. intersecting said available routes with expected average vehicle speed data for the road components of each of said series of road components constituting said available routes so as to determine expected transit times for said available routes; i. directly or indirectly comparing the actual transit time with the expected transit times for each of said available routes so as to produce delay factors for said routes indicative of the degree of vehicular traffic congestion on the individual road components thereof at the time; and j. determining an average delay factor for a plurality of vehicles using a given road component, which average is weighted on the basis of at least the likelihood of any of the available routes having been followed.