3rd Open Data Challenge for Public Transportation in Tokyo

TRIP PLANNER FOR MUSLIM TOURISTSNIPPON KOEI R&D Center

1. Entrant's name: NIPPON KOEI R&D Center
2. Submission's title: Trip Planner for Muslim Tourists
3. Description of the submission:
This is an idea report about a web service for helping Muslim tourists visiting Tokyo toarrange their daily trips according to mosque locations, prayer times and restaurant
locations that provide Muslim-friendly (halal) dishes.
With the approaching 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, Japan prepares to welcome
40 million tourists next year. Among them, more than one million are expected to be from
Muslim countries. Muslims have strict dietary requirements (such as they cannot consume
pork or alcoholic drinks) and they need to find prayer spaces to perform daily prayers (fivetimes a day). Japan is making an extra effort to become a touristic destination for Muslims
by providing prayer rooms at stations and airports, by preparing local maps indicating halalrestaurants, etc. But, accessing this information and arranging travel plans accordingly isstill a hurdle.
This web service will bring together information about halal restaurants, mosques as wellas public transport and help Muslim tourists not only to locate mosques, prayer rooms
and restaurants, but also to arrange their trips with the use of public transport in Tokyo.
All necessary information will be gathered using open data or crowdsourcing throughsocial media like Facebook and Twitter.
An example trip plan for visiting Skytree and Ueno Park, starting from Tokyo Station isshown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Trip plan example

4. Used API and Data type:
Timetable database

Timetable database of railway stations and bus stops will begenerated using Public Transportation Data API and will beupdated regularly.

Railway stations and Location database of railway stations, bus stops and served routes
bus stops database
will be generated using Public Transportation Data API. This
database will be useful for finding nearest bus stop and railwaystation.
Connections database

A connections database covering all railway stations and busstops will be generated in network graph form using Public
Transportation Data API. This database will be used to findalternative paths between a departure and destination pair. It will
be updated regularly together with the timetable database.

Openrouteservice API

In the case that nearest mosque or restaurant is within a walking
distance, a free-to-use service, Openrouteservice API(https://openrouteservice.org) will be used to calculate walking
distance and duration.

Mosque database

Locations of mosques, masjids and prayer rooms in Tokyo as wellas their operating hours will be obtained by asking social media
users, who follow accounts related with Muslims in Japan, toshare information

Prayer times database

Prayer times database will be generated using free-to-use PrayerTimes API (https://aladhan.com/prayer-times-api).

Restaurant database

Locations of restaurants that provide halal dishes in Tokyo as wellas types of the restaurant (Japanese, Indian, western etc.) andtheir operating hours will be obtained by asking social media
users, who follow accounts related with Muslims in Japan, toshare information

OpenStreetMap

We will use OpenStreetMap service, a free-to-use service,(https://www.openstreetmap.org) to display maps and to get
onclick locations.

10. Detailed description:
Outline of the system: is shown in Figure 2. It consists of 3 search processes and a planning
process. Users will access to this service through their PCs, tablets or mobile phones.
There will be 3 menu items as ‘Find nearest mosque’, ‘Find nearest restaurant’ and ‘Trip
planner’. ‘Find nearest mosque’ menu will ask the user to set location and routing
preferences. Then the service will return a list of 3 nearest mosques according to travel
time using mosque database and public transport timetables. ‘Find nearest restaurant’menu will ask the user to set location, routing preferences and restaurant preferences.
Then the service will return a list of 3 nearest restaurants according to travel time usingrestaurant database and public transport timetables. ‘Trip planner’ menu will ask the user
to set departure location & time, return location & time, destinations to visit & stay times,
trip settings, routing preferences and restaurant preferences. Then the service will returna trip plan to visit destinations, to perform prayers at mosques within prayer times (usinga prayer times database) and to have meals at restaurants at specified times.
Flow charts of mosque search process and planning process are given in Figure 3 and 4.

Figure 2: Outline of the system

Figure 3: Mosque search process

Figure 4: Trip plan process

Route search algorithm: Route search algorithm between given origin destination points(bus stops or rail stations) is explained in Figure 5. First, several route alternatives between
origin and destination points are extracted using connections graph, with distance-based
nth shortest path search method. Then, for each route alternative, total travel time
including transfers are calculated based on timetables. Finally, routes are ranked according
to routing preferences and first 3 alternatives are returned.

Figure 5: Route search algorithm