IIT Roorkee wins Smart Move Innovative Urban Mobility Challenge
Roorkee: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee is a winner in the Smart Move Innovative Urban Mobility Challenge organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) supported by the Smart Cities Mission, the National Institute of Urban Affairs, and GIZ India. The research team from IIT Roorkee comprises Prof. Amit Agarwal, Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, along with his students Mr. Arpit Shrivastava and Mr. Devesh Pratap Singh, and Ms. Itisha Jain. Shri Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, MoHUA, awarded the team IIT Roorkee at the 4th annual Urban Mobility Conference of India, held at Sushma Swaraj Bhavan New Delhi. The team developed an ‘Interactive passenger information system to predict the crowding levels in the public transit system.’
Congratulating to the winning team, Prof. Ajit. K. Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, “The work of the winning team amplifies the attractiveness of public transport. This will reduce our dependence on private motorized transport which is an important goal to address the adverse environmental impact of private transport”
Team IIT Roorkee developed an interactive passenger information system (PIS) and integrated a route planning algorithm, real-time crowding levels. The final product consists of an Android application for the end-users and a web page to replicate the digital passenger information board installed at bus stops. The route planning algorithm integrates advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence models trained on the historical ticketing data to predict the crowding levels in the public transit system. For real-time occupancy of the public transport vehicles using CCTV footage, the product is complemented by computer vision models. For a test case, raw data was facilitated by the Capital Region Urban Transportation (CRUT) Bhubaneshwar. The NIUA team provided various inputs to improve the final product.
Speaking about his team’s recent achievement, Prof. Amit Agarwal, Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, said, “consistent efforts of the students and the ecosystem of IIT Roorkee have led to the final award-winning product. The developed products are efficacious to empower and encourage the populace to adopt a revamped transportation system. The information system will not only boost the transit ridership but also ensure equity for all user segments to enhance overall convenience and empower the decision-making of public transit users in planning the safest journey in COVID recovering times and the time after it.”
About 80 teams participated in the Smart Move Innovative Urban Mobility Challenge organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in November 2020. After the vigorous screening, the top 10 teams were shortlisted to develop the product and then present their work in front of the jury in October 2021. The ingenious ideas were evaluated based on various parameters, such as distinctly contextual, implementable, scalable, time-bound, practical, financially feasible, measurable (objectively verifiable), and social impact on urban mobility.
The top 3 proposals selected in the challenge will be provided contracts jointly worth ₹20,00,000 with a minimum contract value of ₹ 5,00,000. Additionally, the winning teams will have an opportunity to present their solution to the Smart Cities Mission, the Government of India.
In the future, the team would like to increase the robustness of the application for large-scale deployment, make it available for other urban agglomerations. Further, to facilitate the transit operators/ agencies, the crowding levels can be complemented by the transit fleet to determine the temporal gaps in the demand and supply.