Final Report Summary - WISETRIP (Wide Scale network of E-systems for Multimodal Journey Planning and Delivery of Trip Intelligent Personalised data)
Executive summary
WISETRIP stands for 'Wide scale network of e-systems for multimodal journey planning and delivery of trip intelligent personalised data'. There are various journey planning systems which find route data of various transport modes with variant geographical scope. International travellers need to combine information from such sources while they are not used to visit such systems or do not know their existence. The necessity to build a network of journey planners is evident. The network must construct responses for multimodal journey planning based on the data elements brought by the responsible journey planners. Getting across countries requires the collection of all necessary components of partial trips, through digital integration of the participating engines. To achieve this, a centralised coordinating entity was constructed which has connector interfaces to all participating engines.
A common interface has been designed to:
- be open and simple so that planners get connected with minimal development effort needs;
- keep the minimum data set at the core level and leave the destination knowledge at the participating engines, which validate the user input when necessary.
A core algorithmic interface has been designed and implemented which performs validation of trip query components, analyses them into partial queries, identifies gateway nodes and the relevant Journey planners to use and finally submits the partial queries. When it receives partial results, it combines them to form the final result and present it to the end user. The system interface functions over fixed and mobile web. The tool goes beyond typical trip search; it filters results, defines preferences upon transport modes as well as gives the ability to build the trip based on ready defined paths of the trip. WISETRIP is a set of personalised services that aim to assist the user at all trip stages. The user can create a personal space where he saves trip responses. Based on the stored trip, it creates a structure that represents a time schedule running over all trip stages along with predefined notification message. The user can choose which notification to receive. Moreover, he can configure the criteria for alerting information. Alerting can lead to re-planning suggestions. The information is called trip-intelligent because it is based on the users selected trip, combined with real-time information and the personal preferences.
The service was tested by panels of expert users from participating countries and was demonstrated to the public through http://www.wisetrip.travel Usage initiated requests for trips along the following places: United Kingdom (UK), Finland, Greece, Florence (Italy) and Hangzhou (China). A broad assessment confirmed the acceptance of the service by the users. Users also expressed concerns for future advancement and the need to complete the system content and for the system to remain affordable. Continuation of operation has been validated. Planning tasks identified and compared business models and marketing plans.
Project context and objectives
Mobility and demand trends of tourism and citizen transport need multi-sourced and combined data from various actors. The question remains how and when to best go from A to B. The complex way to get the right answer has to take into consideration all alternatives and adapt the answer to user preferences. Existing systems for journey planning are providing such services at a regional level or on the basis of single-mode transportation adequately, but the combination of multi-level information at a wider scale and the delivery of dynamic personalised data have not been properly addressed. Though such systems are popular among citizens at the location covered, the traveller is not aware of their existence and thus does not use them.
Based on this fact, a multi-source and multimodal planning service should be developed, that can link and cooperate with the necessary journey planning engines. Apart from synthesis of information that comes from journey planners and is used mainly for information and planning purposes, the final choice and the performance of a trip are mostly affected by variant parameters. Information about actual time of departure, cancellation of a trip, modifications of schedules and real-time events that might affect trip performance are also necessary.
The grid of trip parameters can compose a personalised set of information that should be delivered to the traveller at the various steps of the trip process, via various means of communications. To fulfil these needs, a journey planning service is required to identify and create personalised information either before or during the trip. The project aims for the coordination of systems that provide journey planning services to cooperate creatively and form complex answers and produce real-time personalised information. Existing independent systems for journey planning become active subsystems of a unified service, operating as a network of coordinated journey planners.
The scope is to enhance the present type of journey planning service through a PC or mobile application by developing a service for planning multimodal journeys beyond European by taking into account multiple criteria and complex scheduling constraints. The system should make a fundamental contribution through the personalisation engine based on personal criteria to provide instant information to users. The challenge is not to develop a central system, but to provide an open framework for journey planners to participate into a service that builds and enhances services, becoming a one-stop shop for users to find and utilise journey planning services across the world.
The use of the WISETRIP platform by a traveller will make travelling easier and modal change management will be easier to accomplish. Avoidance of tiring situations, re-adjustment and optimisation of a scheduled trip on the move, reduction of traveller's uncertainty and increase of safety sense are among the impacts. A wide European expansion is needed to accomplish this.
Knowledge extraction from other projects was useful in order to achieve integration of their outcome into WISETRIP as well as to reuse data models, use scenarios and consider their experimentation and demonstration findings. According to an international survey, there are between 25 different journey planners from 8 European countries plus China and Japan. Most do not provide alerting services, regular updates, early requests, real-time data or incident information and there is no ability to input a location or route. Not all journey planners have the same approach for criteria used in the input query; they do not have the same sorting and filtering capabilities of the output and do not have the same proximity. Complexity arises when city/nation or transport network system boundaries have to be crossed to form a path that includes destinations, intermediaries, and transit points, types of moves and changes of transportation modes. Variant user scenarios form a complex grid of requirements should also be satisfied.
Scenarios that guided the orientation of services are:
- 'Seeking fewer hops within the trip and wanting on-trip notifications for changes';
- 'Need to redesign trip plan in cases of unexpected change';
- 'Seeking for the cheaper trip solution - Ability for online booking';
- 'Complete trip information in familiar language';
- 'Complete trip information not yet available';
- 'Change of vessel'
- 'Integration of urban paths into international trip - Door-to-door journey planning';
- 'Regular life cycle information';
- 'Frequent traveller - Regular update information'.
In order to satisfy the scenarios, practical milestones and objectives were set for the project progress:
A. Specify well-defined user scenarios and requirements of multimodal transport at a wide geographical scale involving metropolitan, regional, urban and interurban levels.
B. Define and design the overall system architecture and data model considering the user scenarios and requirements set, based on the needs of the international traveller and the promotion of remote rural destinations.
C. Specify the trip lifecycle process in order to define rules upon which information is processed and sent to the traveller throughout the entire trip.
D. Define clear and precise interconnection guidelines for journey planner systems. Define in a well-documented manner and specify the interfacing requirements for each participating journey planner and the general interfacing and functionality guidelines for every new journey planner to link to the core system, so that they can become active components.
E. Design the algorithmic solution to coordinate results from different systems. Problems might arise due to geographical overlap of different systems, due to the different behaviours of algorithms utilised and gaps of information in partial responses might exist.
F. Define a uniform information delivery service with personalised features and multiple utilised devices for information push and pull. Delivery services should be based on technologies that secure open services and interoperability. The aim is to make the system available onto variant interfaces either integrated within web portals or mobile device applications.
G. Integrate the software modules, validate the platform and test the functionality in both laboratory and real-life conditions, in order to show that unification, combination and communication synergy among journey planning engines is feasible and can become useful to the public and the industry.
H. Demonstrate the unified service monitor and validate its performance and operation within real user scenarios. The system should be assessed in terms of scalability and performance in order to identify possible restrictions and necessary solutions towards wider deployment and business orientation. A user acceptance survey should be included base on several criteria related to the data quality, their accuracy and adherence to real needs, the quality and easiness of the user interface and the willingness to pay.
I. Form an external users group comprising of users, public authorities, transport operators, etc. and provide continuous updates to this group.
J. Define a sustainable exploitation strategy, through the study of trends and needs of the transport and travel market as well as the results of the overall evaluation and define a business model that will ensure the optimum commercial exploitation and utilisation of the project's results. Commercialisation roadmap and directions will be based on feasibility criteria, assessment of risks and the findings of the study of the potential business models.
Project results
Description of services
The system is a user-friendly and easy-to-use combined transportation information system, able to get requests and provide multimodal trip answers and travelling information.
Main services
- Public trip search where each user specifies his query for a specific trip and the associated criteria and the system replies with a list of available solutions.
- Profile management where the user configures or edits his personal data and travelling criteria.
- Personalised trip services, where the user specifies:
a) the parameters and conditions according to which personalised messages are triggered and sent,
b) the types of messages that he prefers to receive.
The system is demonstrated on http://www.wisetrip.travel For demonstration purposes, a limited number of routes are supported by the platform.
Finding a trip
Trip searching is the main service provided by the system. Origin and destination names are written free by the user and are validated by participating journey planners, according to their knowledge and dataset. WISETRIP is a public service available for all end-users, without registration. Both a simple search and an advanced search are provided.
In the simple use, the user selects the country of origin and the country of destination from a dropdown lists, and type the city of origin and destination accordingly in the relative fields. Then the user has to select the date and time he wishes to travel and to indicate whether he wants to depart or arrive on that time and date. The system utilises its real-time connection with the appropriate Journey planners and is searching for all available trip solutions. All available trip solutions appear and are ranked duration. Results can also be sorted by departure or arrival date. In a more detailed view each trip is divided in one more segments. The advanced search page has the same features as the simple search, but is enriched with more advanced searching criteria and more specifically:
Profile management
Any user can register and create an account. Profile creation is available only from the web interface and is not supported by the mobile interface. On the personal page, a summary of data provided during his/her registration appears, and four tabs that can be modified at any time according to user's preferences.
Personalised trip services
Any user can use the search service and specify his trip request but trip selection is a service provided only for registered users.
All saved trips are stored in 'My trips' seven categories of personalised services are provided.
1. My preferences: The user is able to choose the mean that will be used by the system to notify him about selected trip.
2. Scheduled notifications: The user can set up the type of events he wants to be notified for, and the time that this notification will be sent.
3. Trip disturbances alerts: The user selects for which types of trip segments he wants to receive any disturbances info affecting the trip.
4. Trip segments validations: The user sets the time period that the validity of trip information will be checked by the system.
5. Automatic trip reschedules: The user defines for what reasons the system should automatically provide alternative solutions.
6. My reminders: The user can set messages he would like to receive before or during the trip.
7. My bulletin: This category of services refers mainly to mobile users since it serves as a means for the user to notify WISETRIP about his position during a trip and inform about any delays or disturbances, so that other users can be informed.
User interfaces
The transportation information system accompanies the user starting from the search of a route until the arrival. To this end, a set of front-end interfacing mechanisms has been implemented, allowing the distribution and presentation of WISETRIP at several devices, connected at the Internet. The fixed web interface is available at http://www.wisetrip.travel The portal provides access to download the implemented mobile application.
Web interface
The basic demonstrator of the system is the web portal is a multilingual interface (English, Finnish, Greek, Italian and Chinese). The web interface is compliant to most wide spread used web browsers, like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Safari. To be fully functional user has to enable JavaScript, Cookies and Flash options.
Mobile application
The mobile interface is a native application that can be installed on any mobile device running on a Windows Mobile 5 PPC or a Windows Mobile 6 operating system with a touch screen. It is available at: http://www.wisetrip.travel/WisetripFrntEnd/private/WisetripGoesMobile.action The mobile application is available only in English and serves different purposes than the web interface since it is oriented to be used during the trip. It runs on a phone screen, which means that much of the information that is visible on the web interface is not shown or truncated. But the application is very easy and quick to use.
The application can be used on most devices connected to the Internet but has limited functionality, in comparison with the web interface. Only the simple trip searching is supported, while the information at trip details view is cut down and includes for each segment only origin, destination, date and time of departure and arrival, the duration and the distance of the segment and the transport mode. Map representation is supporting only map view functionality. The application does not allow creation of user accounts. From the personalisation services only the category 'My bulletin' is provided allowing messaging interchanges relative to trip disruption and user position.
Mobile portal
During the project, significant changes were mentioned in the area of mobile technologies. Smartphones became widely known and to attract users of new generation smartphones, an interface suitable for a Webkit based browser has been implemented and is available at: http://www.wisetrip.travel/WisetripMobileThis mobile portal is currently available only in English and it is mainly focused to Apple's Safari browser for iPhone devices. Its functionality is the same with the mobile application.
Progress beyond the state of the art
International journey planning refers to the decision making process where alternative international, national and urban transport segments are combined in order to identify efficient journey itineraries. This task involves various difficulties for the traveller:
i) information regarding the relevant transport services is usually provided through different information sources which may not be easily accessible by the traveler;
ii) the information provided is not fully comprehensive to the traveller who is not acquainted with the transport system of other countries;
iii) the task of combining alternative transport options for planning a given journey involves substantial computational effort.
An additional issue in Journey planning relates to the contingencies arising in the execution of a journey. Delays or changes may endanger the viability of an initial journey plan. Thus, an additional difficulty encountered during the execution of an international journey relates to the lack of sufficient and comprehensive up-to-date information regarding the remainder of the journey.
It is evident that the provision of door-to-door multimodal Journey planning and information services anywhere and anytime through a single point of access is key in resolving the difficulties in planning and executing journeys. The deployment of the internet and wireless information and communication technologies have enabled the development of Internet-based journey planners for facilitating travellers in planning their travel decisions anytime and anywhere. Substantial effort has been focused on the development of advanced transport information systems for providing users with dynamic travel information and multimodal trip planning services.
A critical review of the systems developed and of existing Internet-based Journey planners led to the identification of a series of shortcomings of these systems:
- Lack of personalised travel information and information customised on the travellers' profile.
- Lack of online support of on-trip decision making for re-planning a journey.
- Limited international door-to-door Journey planning capabilities. The major causes for this include: differing data formats provided by different data suppliers; gaps in service data provided to the data manager; unwillingness of transport operators to provide data; difficulties of updating and maintaining large quantities of data from different sources.
- Availability of fare information and ticket booking capabilities are limited.
- Limited on-trip information services to travellers.
- Limited use of dynamic and real-time data in journey re-planning services.
The WISETRIP system aims to address the above stated limitations by offering door-to-door multimodal Journey planning and personalised travel information services throughout the entire journey. The provision of personalised information is a key feature of the system since it offers the users the capability to store any itineraries and select the types of alerts they need to receive in any phase of the journey. The system addresses on-trip re-planning and travel information needs through providing the user with alerts regarding delays or disruptions affecting their journey. The system also addresses the limited geographical and modal coverage of existing systems by offering the user the capability to plan international journeys covering all segments of the journey. Re-planning of any journey may be done by mobile phone.
The system provides the capability to integrate new Journey planners under the condition of building appropriate communication layers according to relevant specifications. The geographical and modal coverage of the system may be further enhanced by integrating international, national or urban Journey planners covering different areas and modes. Fare information and ticket booking capabilities are also integrated in the system through the provision of the appropriate web links to the booking engines for any part of the journey.
The concept of interconnected multimodal Journey planners into a unified service is in its own a case of uniqueness and innovation towards Journey planning. Though similar attempts have been recorded in the past, emphasis has mostly been on interconnecting different planning engines. Urban transport planning remains outside the context of the problem. It builds and combines fields of innovation sourced by participating algorithms within the connected Journey planning engines.
WISETRIP goes beyond the state of the art by enabling different types of personalised services based on system automation, integration with real-time data providers and personal experience. Chosen trips are becoming personal trips and form the basis of an information cycle. Design and system knowledge remains trip-centric, which is the most substantial element of the personal data that are considered combined to personal preferences. More progress can be made when the system would also take into account environmental criteria. That way, intelligent trip strategies can be expressed and taken into account within the planning and re-planning processes of a trip.
Project implementation
User needs
A major task involved identification of services and functionalities that should be incorporated in the proposed system. The objective was to determine and assess a set of potential system functionalities on the basis of covering user needs while complying with the technological, institutional, and business oriented constraints.
At the first stage, a set of preliminary user needs has been identified taking into account the major features of various existing journey planners based on an international survey for internet-based journey planners and work performed within EC research projects. At a second stage, preliminary user needs were further assessed in terms of importance assigned to them by the end-users, through relevant surveys performed by each country represented in the project. The outcome of this process includes a list of specific functions and services for incorporation. A set of preliminary user needs was determined by analysing the features of the major existing journey planners and identifying the gaps or shortcomings in the services offered.
This was achieved by performing the following tasks:
- Literature review for relevant systems: Literature revealed some fundamental user requirements for developing a good journey planning system. This includes the function of multimodal and international transport information and delivery of real-time information to mobile phones. The rising demand from the customer point of view expects instant information.
- Review of previous EC research projects of direct interest to WISETRIP: IM@GINE-IT, EMOTION, EU SPIRIT and ITISS. Review proved that that there is an opportunity to provide a service for planning and executing multimodal journeys beyond regional and national boundaries.
- An international survey of experience with internet-based Journey planners resulted in information being provided for a total of 25 journey planners from 8 European countries plus China and Japan. Particularly interesting results have been investigated further in order to specify the major categories of institutional constraints and considerations prevailing for journey planners.
The analysis of the findings from the Journey planners survey, have led to the identification of the following limitations of existing systems:
- no international door-to-door multimodal journey planning service has been identified among the journey planners surveyed;
- availability of fare information is limited and is provided for specific transport services;
- the information offered is provided in the national language;
- there is a lack of real-time alerts to travellers now, but this is a feature that many journey planners envisage for the near future;
- limited dynamic and real-time data.
This set of generic needs is further elaborated by identifying potential services that cover one or more of them. A set of functionalities that covered the user needs was identified. A survey took place across five European countries (UK, Spain, Italy, Finland and Greece) and China, where end users were requested to determine and prioritise the associated system functionalities. The analysis of data collected was based on the application of the quality function deployment (QFD) method, which provides the following types of measures:
i) the overall weight of importance for each user need from the perspective of end-users;
ii) the overall weight of satisfaction of the end-users from the existing systems in covering each of the needs; and
iii) the overall priority calculated for each of the potential system functionalities. The measures were calculated for the entire set of data collected at each site, and for each country separately. The outcome of this process was a list of potential system functionalities rated with an importance score.
System architecture
The determination and analysis of user needs and the review of existing Journey planners that indicated the prevailing technical, business and institutional considerations and constraints were the main inputs towards the definition of the complete functional and data architecture of WISETRIP. A set of desirable and applicable system services have been determined and the relative workable architecture has been agreed. The architecture has divided the system into three fundamental layers:
- First layer - Participating services and source data
These are the existing systems, external information and the data environment including personal user data related to trip selection and user preferences.
- Second layer - Main system
Contains three main modules: The journey planning module, the personalisation module and the services module. The final journey plan is produced by the core system and is handed to the services for delivery or to the real-time decision module (RTDM) for further processing. The platform is interfacing to the first layer:
a) the core system interacts with the participating journey planners and
b) the RTDM personalisation system interfaces with external information sources and process the relative data as well as user relative data and profile.
The services of the platform are communicating with the devices of WISETRIP (third layer) through the intermediate 'Devices interfaces layer' that takes care of the open and harmonised interconnection to various devices. Knowledge of the platform includes data about participating transport networks and a trip cycle model that is being used to build the personal trip life cycle data of each traveller (first layer).
- Third layer - Distribution
The function of providing information and service to multiple users through various technological devices. The main role belongs to the devices and the user interfaces running on top of them.
The overall system consists of a number of task-oriented components that are logically grouped into four major functional components: user interface, WISETRIP core, WISETRIP personalisation and participating journey planners. Each of them is a relatively independent part of the architecture and has its functional scope, role and responsibilities. Depending on their attributes, they dynamically collaborate to support various uses cases and workflow scenarios. The 'WISETRUP architecture and data model' presents a reference model architecture that describes the way the planner (core system) is composed from other journey planning systems, the communication layers, the functional role of the decision mechanism and adaptation modules that are involved and the general methodologies, concepts, data architecture and data requirements, functional modules and ideas, as well as the tools and technologies that will be used to build up a fully functional prototype.
System implementation
Journey planners' adaptation interface
Currently, five journey planners (JP) are connected with WISETRIP, providing routing information for interurban or even urban trips within their areas of metropolitan, regional or national scale. The consortium has assured the continuity of the existing connections with the participating JPs and additionally is trying to attract new JPs to participate. The development effort for the connection of a JP is minimal. The fundamental condition for a connection with a new JP is to be able to provide reliable routing information for a city or a nation. From that point on, the JP has to establish a simple communication interface with WISETRIP so that it can provide partial trip responses to queries. The established interface needs to be light enough and does not impose heavy loads or require extreme system resources.
The WISETRIP coordination office is providing a Technical Guide for JPs who are willing to be integrated. The documentation guide presents the data requirements and the corresponding web services that should be implemented by each JP.
The mandatory connection and operation requirements include the following:
- Data requirements: The JP has to uniquely identify each node within its network and the international gateways in its network. The JP has to identify the supported transport modes and the names of operating companies and the relative means. Data have to be provided in at least two the language of the nation that JP is established and English.
- Services requirements: Three basic web services have to be provided by participating Journey planners to the WISETRIP system:
- Node validation: validates a specific node within a Journey planner's network. If the requested node is valid a flag indicating validity is raised. Otherwise a list of proposed alternatives is retrieved.
- Find trips: returns all combinations of trips from a specific Journey planner from origin to destination.
- Get international nodes for each node: returns all associated international nodes for a specific Interurban node from a particular journey planner. A list of international nodes is retrieved.
Besides the mandatory requirements, a JP could optionally provide more data and support the relative added value services.
In order to achieve maximum interoperability between WISETRIP and the participating JPs, the project development team has defined an xml scheme which has been designed to meet all requirements. WISETRIPWeb is a common protocol that should be followed by all participating JPs. However, adaptation layers can also be implemented if required.
Traveller specific services
The personalisation system performs planning functions and procedures according to the user's profile and criteria selected. It detects information that must be sent to each user, processes alerting messages, produces notifications or reschedules a specific trip segment when necessary.
The user registers in the system and creates a profile, giving personal details and declaring preferences on transportation modes, services he wants to subscribe to, type and occurrence of notifications to be received, etc.
For each trip in which the user is interested, the following services can be provided via email or SMS:
- notification on disturbances;
- trip redesign;
- validate trip;
- real-time interaction with the system.
These services are indicative. An extensive set of personalised services has been defined, implemented and provided by the system, always with the users' acquiescence. Trip life cycle model takes into account the different periods of registered trips that constitute the trip life cycle model. Based on these data, the decision module builds a timetable with scheduled events and notifications, according to which up-to-date information is 'pushed' to the user. Information is analysed and according to the trips cycles the RTDM sets of one or more notifications for one or more users. The trip life cycle manager is identified as a separate component, part of the RTDM, and includes functions related to personalised data. The RTDM is the kernel of the personalisation system layer. This module is based on events. It communicates with the other modules and layers of the system via web services. The communication flow between RTDM and other modules in WISETRIP is bidirectional.
One of the main functionalities of the RTDM is to manage and monitor all active trips of WISETRIP. To achieve this, each trip has its own trip management process: every time an active trip is detected a new TripManager object is created for managing the trip. The manager will control the whole trip, generate a list with relevant scheduled and unscheduled events and define when and how to send each notification message. Another characteristic of the RTDM module is the possibility for to the user to subscribe only to those services he is interested in. This will be defined at the beginning of the process and can be modified during the whole trip. In order to develop a flexible and adaptable system, The RTDM has been designed to work with events. Therefore, it keeps track of each trip by creating and manipulating different types of events. The advantage of using this system is the possibility to add new functionalities to the system in the mid-term future. RTDM manages several types of scheduled and unscheduled events.
The following list presents events that can occur in a trip and the way they can be processed:
- Scheduled notification (scheduled event) is used for sending a text message to a traveller and is generated by the service subscriptions of the trip.
- Segment validation (scheduled event) is carried out for checking if a given trip segment is still scheduled by the JP that originally provided it. If the validated segment remains as originally scheduled, no action is needed. In the case the validated segment is no longer scheduled as was originally provided, the changes and disturbances produced have to be checked.
- JP segment disturbance, trip segment disturbance, trip traveller position (unscheduled event) have in common that they notify a disturbance in one of the scheduled trip segments or in the expected traveller position. In these cases the possible consequences of the events have to be evaluated.
- Trip modified (unscheduled event): means that an existing trip has been modified or that a new trip has been created. It is possible that the real-time options of the trip have been changed. In this case, the trip manager will reload the trip information from the database and will recalculate the list of scheduled trip events.
Open layer for interface development
User interface is strongly influenced by the fact that WISETRIP services must be accessible through different devices. In order to reach the widest possible target audience, specialised front-end interfacing mechanisms have been developed which are capable of delivering content for multiple devices. Currently, three such mechanisms are available: a web interface, a native application that can be installed into any mobile device running Windows Mobile Professional operating system and a mobile interface suitable for iPhone Safari browser. These interfaces need to handle interaction with the user in a way that is consistent across various types of end devices. Therefore, depending on the user's device's capabilities, the system functionality can be extended by plugging in new user interface components with the form of add-ons that will not affect or impact the overall system.
An open, extensible and customisable user interface system has been designed, where each pluggable user interface component can consume functionality offered by other components in a controlled and determined manner through service-oriented interfaces. The information requirements of the user interface are exposed by the WISETRIP core with in form of well-defined service interfaces. Such services include the authentication of the user, the trip finder service, the node validation service, the user profiling services and many others. The user interface interacts with the personalisation system to request specialised trip services. An xml scheme and relative wsdl have been defined supporting the provision of all available web services in a uniform and open way. The user interface acts as the consumer of these web services, creating client stubs that shield network infrastructure diversifications, while also using address identifiers known as endpoints to locate these services. These services are available under a known set of credentials to prevent unauthorised disclosure.
This loosely coupled integration between WISETRIP core, the personalisation system and the user interface promotes flexibility that is crucial in the system due to the large diversity presented in the user interface components. The high degree of independence imposed by web services between components allow the replacement of components or even their change, without having to apply reflective changes. Therefore, the user interface can be extended with new components that integrate new technologies allowing for seamless transition of enhanced functionality to the system by exploiting the existing functionality of the underlying service. The three front-end interfacing mechanisms implemented are using the one and single wsdl providing either the whole set of available web services or part of them.
Performance
In parallel with the implementation of the system components, laboratory testing took place for the assessment of the technical performance of the various functionalities and services of the system. Any discrepancy of the system performance from standards set by the developers initiated a process for refining and fixing the functions, creating the degradation of the system performance and thus leading to a technically reliable and a robust system. The technical assessment of the system was aimed at verifying the integrity, stability, and computational time efficiency of the functions and services comprising the system.
The assessment of the system functions was based on measuring and assessing their performance under 37 technical indicators grouped into three categories:
- technical reliability indicators assessing the robustness of the system functions;
- information consistency indicators assessing the capability of functions to provide consistent alerts and trip itineraries to users;
- response time indicators assessing the computational time required by the functions to process requests; the technical assessment of the services was based on assessing 20 indicators grouped in two major categories:
- technical reliability indicators assessing the robustness and integrity of the services offered by the system;
- time efficiency indicators assessing the computational efficiency of the time-critical services.
The assessment was performed through the analysis of data collected from a series of lab trials of functions. Hypothesis testing was performed in order to validate the technical reliability and response time efficiency of the functions and services implemented.
The data analysis for technical reliability indicators proved that the system functions and services respond to requests providing consistent information, with a minimum success rate of 98 %. Data analysis shows that the computational time for processing alerts was negligible (less than 5 ms), while the time required for itinerary planning was an estimated 57 seconds under a medium level operational workload. It has been verified that the system offers an exhaustive list of alternative feasible itineraries for any trip request, created by combining intermediate itineraries provided by the participating JPs. The average estimated time of 57 seconds required for an itinerary planning is considered as an acceptable time. However, the time requirements for responding to a trip request consist of time components which are beyond the system's control and occasionally become the reason of a time increase. WISETRIP developers and the participating JPs tried to optimise times relative to the nodes validation process and data transfer. Trips caching is activated under certain circumstances and in this case the itinerary planning response time is limited to 1-2 ms.
Use of the platform
After laboratory testing and system refinement, the prototype became stable and reliable enough for real-life demonstration. Demonstration was accomplished in two stages: the pre-demonstration phase and the public demonstration phase. The whole demonstration period lasted about six months and took place at five validation sites. The pre-demonstration phase was carried out by a panel of professional testers, aiming to test the capabilities and user acceptance of the platform and services in a controlled environment, and to derive useful indications and feedback from the trials that may help in consolidating the system functionalities and services before starting real-life public user trials. Based on the results of pre-demonstration phase, the platform has been updated and improved.
After updating the platform, the second phase of the demonstration started. This demonstration aimed to evaluate the services in real-life conditions involving a large number of public users. The purpose of this phase was to extend the pre-demonstration user acceptance evaluation and assessment, addressing the following main assessment categories:
- user acceptance, aiming at assessing the non-functional features of the system from the users' perspective;
- willingness to pay, aiming at investigating the potential users' willingness to use the system under various types and levels of charges.
About 2700 users visited the web interface and 608 from them filled questionnaires addressing not only users' acceptance but also their willingness to pay. Although the demonstration phase has typically ended, users are continuously visiting the web interface and it is indicative that until today there are more than 16 300 page views (4000 trip searches).
Evaluation results
Apart from the laboratory testing and the technical assessment of the system's functionalities and services, the evaluation process contained two supplementary types of assessment:
1. user acceptance assessment aiming at exploring system performance from users' perspective;
2. willingness to pay assessment for specifying the user's willingness to use the system under various levels of charges.
The user acceptance assessment aimed to assess the non-functional features of the information services, including clarity and sufficiency of the information provided and to explore the impacts of the system in the cognitive effort and the time required for journey planning and the traveller's uncertainty during the execution of a trip. The analysis of the ratings collected under each user acceptance metric were analysed by estimating the median and performing a sign test for specifying the lowest value for the actual median. The assessment of user acceptance has been performed in both pre-demonstration phase, and the public demonstration phase. Similar results emerged in both stages. User acceptance assessment confirmed that the information provided by the services is clear and sufficient. Interaction of users with the system services was found user-friendly while the system was expected to reduce the time and cognitive effort requirements for Journey planning. The system applications were expected to reduce the travellers' uncertainty during their journey.
The objective of the assessment of the willingness to pay was to explore the willingness of various categories of users to use the services offered under alternative levels of charges. A stated choice model was developed and calibrated in order to assess the response of the users to alternative levels of charges attributed to the system. The implementation of this type of assessment has been performed through conducting a stated preference survey throughout two European countries (Greece and UK) and China. A major finding is that a substantial percentage of potential end-users are willing to use the system services for a charge. Based on the details of the analysis was found to be a statistically significant parameter.
The coefficients of cost in all formulas were negative implying that the increase in the price has a negative impact on the potential user's utility. Among the characteristics of the respondents, only travel frequency was found statistically significant in all sites, implying that travel frequency has a positive impact on the utility perceived by potential users. Results provide useful input for projecting revenues for the system, taking into account the level of acceptance of the system encountered within the various users groups identified within the analysis. Although exploring the options for setting up a viable business model for operating WISETRIP is beyond the scope of this document, the results provided through the analysis of the willingness to pay indicate that the proposed system has a potential of economic sustainability.
Potential impact
Potential impact and main dissemination activities and exploitation of results
Socioeconomic impact and the wider societal implications
This project confirmed the wider benefits that integrated a door-to-door integrated JP can offer to citizens. In the longer term the outcome should contribute to improving the EC economic position: it enables business travellers to plan their journeys more efficiently, thus leaving more time available for work and achieving more efficient management of uncertainty, stimulating tourists to explore new places, resulting in regional economic growth and contributing to resolving the crisis caused by extraordinary conditions by providing alternative routes and means of transport. Efficient spread of knowledge within situations of crisis will be the key to avoid tiring situations by enabling more efficient reaction based on a quicker response to the user's need. Similar benefit and impact is expected when changes in schedule or vessel assignment are known to the user. Efficient traveller awareness across unexpected conditions and trip changes is the major impact of WISETRIP. The user can make travelling more straightforward and change management will be easier to accomplish. Avoidance of tiring situations is among the most important impacts. The fact that the project has wide European exposure has enabled it to reach a wide audience. In the future, its potential presence within the most popular and leading mobile devices of the world can boosts its use within the EU and worldwide.
The involvement of multiple types of criteria within the trip decision and trip redesign process allows the availability and promotion of many traveller scenarios, giving emphasis to public transport within urban areas. It is common that the traveller is not aware of feasible and cost-effective means to move within the urban edge of an international trip. Linking urban ways with international railway/airline/ferry trip is a means to promote public transport; a necessary promotion towards transport with less CO2 emissions and aiding modal switch. WISETRIP has contributed to the acceptance and use of integrated traveller services. The WISETRIP service links JP systems and real-time data providers and brings them to the service of the traveller. It widens their use and accelerates their positive impact to transport and mobility. A consequence would be to push JSs into enhanced visibility and motivate them to increase their quality in respect to the availability of real-time information. WISETRIP is also contributing to the realisation of various EU-Policies with respect to sustainable transport.
Main dissemination activities
WISETRIP's dissemination and promotion activities have been designed to address and meet the main project objectives of promoting JP services and achieve the largest possible resonance of project results in order to favour large international dissemination and take-up of the approach. Two main dissemination and promotion levels have been identified: a local and a national dissemination level and an EC and International level. The levels moved in parallel during the project development. The first level has represented the immediate field of dissemination and promotion activities for both project and post-project phases. Fundamental to success was to gain interest, involvement and trust of all concerned users.
At second level, WISETRIP was presented in European and international events favouring the adoption of good solutions and good practices identified in other pilot projects. At the same time, important relationships were established. WISETRIP dissemination and promotion activities have involved a coordinated set of instruments and tools, with a mix of regularly timed actions and asynchronous activities: The design of the project logo and general image, in order to show fast the purpose of the project and attract the interest of people, the build-up of the official public website, design and dissemination of project brochure and (e-) newsletters, the external users group, a project workshop.
As a major dissemination channel, the WISETRIP workshop 'A real-time, multi-source and multimodal personal trip planning service' was organised, participation to national or international events and exhibitions, presenting project approach and distributing the dissemination material, research publications in the form of two research papers, liaison with other projects and the link to the platform on local JPs Home page as well as its presence on Facebook.
Exploitation of results
To achieve wide exploitation of the results, a two-fold approach should be followed consistently:
1. Continuation of the system with the best possible advancements and with continuous geographic expansion should be assured.
2. Commercialisation of the service should be sought. In that context exploitation planning considerations that were analysed within the project framework, should be turned into a roadmap of actions.
One of the objectives was to assure system availability and operation after the end of the project, in order to be able to follow and plan its route towards expansion and productive operation, and perhaps even commercialisation.
In that context the consortium is willing to do the following:
- Maintain and operate all major software modules of the platform responsible for trip searching and the RTDM personalisation system, assuring that they will remain up and running;
- Advance platform development and features based either on self-funding or on a potential EC funding. Based mainly on the demonstration and evaluation findings a set of advanced services has already been defined and planned to be implemented by the development team after the end of the project. Development costs will be initially covered by self-funding, while in the same the consortium is exploring relevant calls for proposals to apply for EC funding.
- Continue dissemination activities. Beneficiaries are active in the areas of transport and tourism, participate in conferences, exhibitions and other events and have opportunities to continuously disseminate project results. Communication with the external user group (EUG) that has been consolidated at the framework of the project will be kept active and extended to address also journey planners and transport operators.
It is clear that none of the actions will keep the platform in operation if the JPs will not provide their routing information. Therefore, the consortium has assured the continuity of the existing connection with the participating JPs and additionally tries to attract and invite as many new JPs as possible. The action plan to achieve these objectives has been set and is ongoing within the first semester of 2011.
While the system is operating and expanding, exploitation considerations have been addressed through the exploitation tasks carried out during the project. These tasks identified the dominant actors of the system and compared the variant feasible business models.
According to the outcome of this work the alternatives exploitation routes for WISETRIP could be compliant to the following business models:
A. A marketing entity model: WISETRIP becomes a portal. Its power lies into a large population of visits. Revenues come from the advertisement and promotion of TOs and JPs or other destination based services. Hits, visits and placement of specific links should be billed according to a certain commercial policy.
B. eTourism agent model: WISETRIP becomes an electronic distributor, a sales channel of ticketing services. It acts as an agent of cooperating transport operators or other ticketing sales organisation that offer an online ticketing interface to WISETRIP so that its user can buy tickets for the chosen services. WISETRIP receives a commission from the services sold.
C. Subscription / usage based tariffing model: WISETRIP is a value-added service provided to travellers. It provides online and continuous information for planned and registered trips. In this case, revenue is expected from usage. Registrations and / or messages might be charged under a certain policy that should be attractive and rational, remaining in accordance with the monitored willingness to pay.
We can consider two different cases for the subscription model:
- End customer subscriber model (B2C model): The traveller himself is the user who registers and pays for the usage;
- B2B subscription model (B2B model): The user is a travel and tourism office who acts for the traveller's benefit. The tourism office can use the system to provide value-added service to improve customer relation.
D. Combination of the above: The selection of one of the three abovementioned exploitation directions does not mean that the WISETRIP provider cannot choose to combine two of them or even all three directions. The most obscure combination will be the case for WISETRIP to be an eTourism agent selling tourism services and in parallel providing services to tourism professionals under the B2B case of subscription model.
All models were compared in terms of risks to fail, extra development and investment needs, operation expenses. Though the exploitation plan described and compared four different business models, combination of models is feasible. The combination of the agent model with the B2C model provides a promising field for commercial development.
The main reasoning for this combination is based on the following facts:
- B2C and agent models are both oriented to the end customer, the traveller.
- B2C model provides value-added service on top of the selected trip, which can be the purchased trips from the WISETRIP electronic agent. The two models supplement each other's services.
- The two models share significant parts of the investment and operation requirements. These are the user support mechanism and the marketing activities.
- Integration with ticketing providers or other agencies makes the system more popular and the B2C service become more popular.
The merged model can include higher revenue forecasts without imposing costs up to the sum of the costs from the two models. To become effective, WISETRIP should reach a mature exploitation stage. Each business model imposes different levels of investment while all of them require the system to be expanded at European and international level. Such expansion requires the integration of more JPs and the inclusion of more real-time data and ticketing providers. The main problem is the wide variance in the level and quality of information provided by national JP systems. Further research and development is required to broaden the number of JP systems involved and also to get full multimodal coverage provided in a consistent manner.
WISETRIP also faced the problem of new technologies becoming available during the design phase. iPhones and Android smartphones were not known at the start of the project yet by the project's end these covered 90 % of the smart phone market. Before WISETRIP can be taken to the market, greater partnership is required to bring mobile device, networks, operators and authorities into discussions and development. If this can be achieved, the potential is a global market.
Project website: http://www.WISETRIP-eu.org
The website is the main public information source for the project. It publishes information about the project, its description, mission and objectives, current activities, publishable results and deliverables, news and media announcements and material.
Contact
Forthnet S.A.
Vassilis Spitadakis - R&D Director
Science & Technology Park of Crete Vassilika Vouton
GR 71500
Tel.: +30-281-1391200
Fax.: +30-281-1391207
E-mail: vspit@forthnet.gr
http://www.forthnet.gr
WISETRIP stands for 'Wide scale network of e-systems for multimodal journey planning and delivery of trip intelligent personalised data'. There are various journey planning systems which find route data of various transport modes with variant geographical scope. International travellers need to combine information from such sources while they are not used to visit such systems or do not know their existence. The necessity to build a network of journey planners is evident. The network must construct responses for multimodal journey planning based on the data elements brought by the responsible journey planners. Getting across countries requires the collection of all necessary components of partial trips, through digital integration of the participating engines. To achieve this, a centralised coordinating entity was constructed which has connector interfaces to all participating engines.
A common interface has been designed to:
- be open and simple so that planners get connected with minimal development effort needs;
- keep the minimum data set at the core level and leave the destination knowledge at the participating engines, which validate the user input when necessary.
A core algorithmic interface has been designed and implemented which performs validation of trip query components, analyses them into partial queries, identifies gateway nodes and the relevant Journey planners to use and finally submits the partial queries. When it receives partial results, it combines them to form the final result and present it to the end user. The system interface functions over fixed and mobile web. The tool goes beyond typical trip search; it filters results, defines preferences upon transport modes as well as gives the ability to build the trip based on ready defined paths of the trip. WISETRIP is a set of personalised services that aim to assist the user at all trip stages. The user can create a personal space where he saves trip responses. Based on the stored trip, it creates a structure that represents a time schedule running over all trip stages along with predefined notification message. The user can choose which notification to receive. Moreover, he can configure the criteria for alerting information. Alerting can lead to re-planning suggestions. The information is called trip-intelligent because it is based on the users selected trip, combined with real-time information and the personal preferences.
The service was tested by panels of expert users from participating countries and was demonstrated to the public through http://www.wisetrip.travel Usage initiated requests for trips along the following places: United Kingdom (UK), Finland, Greece, Florence (Italy) and Hangzhou (China). A broad assessment confirmed the acceptance of the service by the users. Users also expressed concerns for future advancement and the need to complete the system content and for the system to remain affordable. Continuation of operation has been validated. Planning tasks identified and compared business models and marketing plans.
Project context and objectives
Mobility and demand trends of tourism and citizen transport need multi-sourced and combined data from various actors. The question remains how and when to best go from A to B. The complex way to get the right answer has to take into consideration all alternatives and adapt the answer to user preferences. Existing systems for journey planning are providing such services at a regional level or on the basis of single-mode transportation adequately, but the combination of multi-level information at a wider scale and the delivery of dynamic personalised data have not been properly addressed. Though such systems are popular among citizens at the location covered, the traveller is not aware of their existence and thus does not use them.
Based on this fact, a multi-source and multimodal planning service should be developed, that can link and cooperate with the necessary journey planning engines. Apart from synthesis of information that comes from journey planners and is used mainly for information and planning purposes, the final choice and the performance of a trip are mostly affected by variant parameters. Information about actual time of departure, cancellation of a trip, modifications of schedules and real-time events that might affect trip performance are also necessary.
The grid of trip parameters can compose a personalised set of information that should be delivered to the traveller at the various steps of the trip process, via various means of communications. To fulfil these needs, a journey planning service is required to identify and create personalised information either before or during the trip. The project aims for the coordination of systems that provide journey planning services to cooperate creatively and form complex answers and produce real-time personalised information. Existing independent systems for journey planning become active subsystems of a unified service, operating as a network of coordinated journey planners.
The scope is to enhance the present type of journey planning service through a PC or mobile application by developing a service for planning multimodal journeys beyond European by taking into account multiple criteria and complex scheduling constraints. The system should make a fundamental contribution through the personalisation engine based on personal criteria to provide instant information to users. The challenge is not to develop a central system, but to provide an open framework for journey planners to participate into a service that builds and enhances services, becoming a one-stop shop for users to find and utilise journey planning services across the world.
The use of the WISETRIP platform by a traveller will make travelling easier and modal change management will be easier to accomplish. Avoidance of tiring situations, re-adjustment and optimisation of a scheduled trip on the move, reduction of traveller's uncertainty and increase of safety sense are among the impacts. A wide European expansion is needed to accomplish this.
Knowledge extraction from other projects was useful in order to achieve integration of their outcome into WISETRIP as well as to reuse data models, use scenarios and consider their experimentation and demonstration findings. According to an international survey, there are between 25 different journey planners from 8 European countries plus China and Japan. Most do not provide alerting services, regular updates, early requests, real-time data or incident information and there is no ability to input a location or route. Not all journey planners have the same approach for criteria used in the input query; they do not have the same sorting and filtering capabilities of the output and do not have the same proximity. Complexity arises when city/nation or transport network system boundaries have to be crossed to form a path that includes destinations, intermediaries, and transit points, types of moves and changes of transportation modes. Variant user scenarios form a complex grid of requirements should also be satisfied.
Scenarios that guided the orientation of services are:
- 'Seeking fewer hops within the trip and wanting on-trip notifications for changes';
- 'Need to redesign trip plan in cases of unexpected change';
- 'Seeking for the cheaper trip solution - Ability for online booking';
- 'Complete trip information in familiar language';
- 'Complete trip information not yet available';
- 'Change of vessel'
- 'Integration of urban paths into international trip - Door-to-door journey planning';
- 'Regular life cycle information';
- 'Frequent traveller - Regular update information'.
In order to satisfy the scenarios, practical milestones and objectives were set for the project progress:
A. Specify well-defined user scenarios and requirements of multimodal transport at a wide geographical scale involving metropolitan, regional, urban and interurban levels.
B. Define and design the overall system architecture and data model considering the user scenarios and requirements set, based on the needs of the international traveller and the promotion of remote rural destinations.
C. Specify the trip lifecycle process in order to define rules upon which information is processed and sent to the traveller throughout the entire trip.
D. Define clear and precise interconnection guidelines for journey planner systems. Define in a well-documented manner and specify the interfacing requirements for each participating journey planner and the general interfacing and functionality guidelines for every new journey planner to link to the core system, so that they can become active components.
E. Design the algorithmic solution to coordinate results from different systems. Problems might arise due to geographical overlap of different systems, due to the different behaviours of algorithms utilised and gaps of information in partial responses might exist.
F. Define a uniform information delivery service with personalised features and multiple utilised devices for information push and pull. Delivery services should be based on technologies that secure open services and interoperability. The aim is to make the system available onto variant interfaces either integrated within web portals or mobile device applications.
G. Integrate the software modules, validate the platform and test the functionality in both laboratory and real-life conditions, in order to show that unification, combination and communication synergy among journey planning engines is feasible and can become useful to the public and the industry.
H. Demonstrate the unified service monitor and validate its performance and operation within real user scenarios. The system should be assessed in terms of scalability and performance in order to identify possible restrictions and necessary solutions towards wider deployment and business orientation. A user acceptance survey should be included base on several criteria related to the data quality, their accuracy and adherence to real needs, the quality and easiness of the user interface and the willingness to pay.
I. Form an external users group comprising of users, public authorities, transport operators, etc. and provide continuous updates to this group.
J. Define a sustainable exploitation strategy, through the study of trends and needs of the transport and travel market as well as the results of the overall evaluation and define a business model that will ensure the optimum commercial exploitation and utilisation of the project's results. Commercialisation roadmap and directions will be based on feasibility criteria, assessment of risks and the findings of the study of the potential business models.
Project results
Description of services
The system is a user-friendly and easy-to-use combined transportation information system, able to get requests and provide multimodal trip answers and travelling information.
Main services
- Public trip search where each user specifies his query for a specific trip and the associated criteria and the system replies with a list of available solutions.
- Profile management where the user configures or edits his personal data and travelling criteria.
- Personalised trip services, where the user specifies:
a) the parameters and conditions according to which personalised messages are triggered and sent,
b) the types of messages that he prefers to receive.
The system is demonstrated on http://www.wisetrip.travel For demonstration purposes, a limited number of routes are supported by the platform.
Finding a trip
Trip searching is the main service provided by the system. Origin and destination names are written free by the user and are validated by participating journey planners, according to their knowledge and dataset. WISETRIP is a public service available for all end-users, without registration. Both a simple search and an advanced search are provided.
In the simple use, the user selects the country of origin and the country of destination from a dropdown lists, and type the city of origin and destination accordingly in the relative fields. Then the user has to select the date and time he wishes to travel and to indicate whether he wants to depart or arrive on that time and date. The system utilises its real-time connection with the appropriate Journey planners and is searching for all available trip solutions. All available trip solutions appear and are ranked duration. Results can also be sorted by departure or arrival date. In a more detailed view each trip is divided in one more segments. The advanced search page has the same features as the simple search, but is enriched with more advanced searching criteria and more specifically:
Profile management
Any user can register and create an account. Profile creation is available only from the web interface and is not supported by the mobile interface. On the personal page, a summary of data provided during his/her registration appears, and four tabs that can be modified at any time according to user's preferences.
Personalised trip services
Any user can use the search service and specify his trip request but trip selection is a service provided only for registered users.
All saved trips are stored in 'My trips' seven categories of personalised services are provided.
1. My preferences: The user is able to choose the mean that will be used by the system to notify him about selected trip.
2. Scheduled notifications: The user can set up the type of events he wants to be notified for, and the time that this notification will be sent.
3. Trip disturbances alerts: The user selects for which types of trip segments he wants to receive any disturbances info affecting the trip.
4. Trip segments validations: The user sets the time period that the validity of trip information will be checked by the system.
5. Automatic trip reschedules: The user defines for what reasons the system should automatically provide alternative solutions.
6. My reminders: The user can set messages he would like to receive before or during the trip.
7. My bulletin: This category of services refers mainly to mobile users since it serves as a means for the user to notify WISETRIP about his position during a trip and inform about any delays or disturbances, so that other users can be informed.
User interfaces
The transportation information system accompanies the user starting from the search of a route until the arrival. To this end, a set of front-end interfacing mechanisms has been implemented, allowing the distribution and presentation of WISETRIP at several devices, connected at the Internet. The fixed web interface is available at http://www.wisetrip.travel The portal provides access to download the implemented mobile application.
Web interface
The basic demonstrator of the system is the web portal is a multilingual interface (English, Finnish, Greek, Italian and Chinese). The web interface is compliant to most wide spread used web browsers, like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Safari. To be fully functional user has to enable JavaScript, Cookies and Flash options.
Mobile application
The mobile interface is a native application that can be installed on any mobile device running on a Windows Mobile 5 PPC or a Windows Mobile 6 operating system with a touch screen. It is available at: http://www.wisetrip.travel/WisetripFrntEnd/private/WisetripGoesMobile.action The mobile application is available only in English and serves different purposes than the web interface since it is oriented to be used during the trip. It runs on a phone screen, which means that much of the information that is visible on the web interface is not shown or truncated. But the application is very easy and quick to use.
The application can be used on most devices connected to the Internet but has limited functionality, in comparison with the web interface. Only the simple trip searching is supported, while the information at trip details view is cut down and includes for each segment only origin, destination, date and time of departure and arrival, the duration and the distance of the segment and the transport mode. Map representation is supporting only map view functionality. The application does not allow creation of user accounts. From the personalisation services only the category 'My bulletin' is provided allowing messaging interchanges relative to trip disruption and user position.
Mobile portal
During the project, significant changes were mentioned in the area of mobile technologies. Smartphones became widely known and to attract users of new generation smartphones, an interface suitable for a Webkit based browser has been implemented and is available at: http://www.wisetrip.travel/WisetripMobileThis mobile portal is currently available only in English and it is mainly focused to Apple's Safari browser for iPhone devices. Its functionality is the same with the mobile application.
Progress beyond the state of the art
International journey planning refers to the decision making process where alternative international, national and urban transport segments are combined in order to identify efficient journey itineraries. This task involves various difficulties for the traveller:
i) information regarding the relevant transport services is usually provided through different information sources which may not be easily accessible by the traveler;
ii) the information provided is not fully comprehensive to the traveller who is not acquainted with the transport system of other countries;
iii) the task of combining alternative transport options for planning a given journey involves substantial computational effort.
An additional issue in Journey planning relates to the contingencies arising in the execution of a journey. Delays or changes may endanger the viability of an initial journey plan. Thus, an additional difficulty encountered during the execution of an international journey relates to the lack of sufficient and comprehensive up-to-date information regarding the remainder of the journey.
It is evident that the provision of door-to-door multimodal Journey planning and information services anywhere and anytime through a single point of access is key in resolving the difficulties in planning and executing journeys. The deployment of the internet and wireless information and communication technologies have enabled the development of Internet-based journey planners for facilitating travellers in planning their travel decisions anytime and anywhere. Substantial effort has been focused on the development of advanced transport information systems for providing users with dynamic travel information and multimodal trip planning services.
A critical review of the systems developed and of existing Internet-based Journey planners led to the identification of a series of shortcomings of these systems:
- Lack of personalised travel information and information customised on the travellers' profile.
- Lack of online support of on-trip decision making for re-planning a journey.
- Limited international door-to-door Journey planning capabilities. The major causes for this include: differing data formats provided by different data suppliers; gaps in service data provided to the data manager; unwillingness of transport operators to provide data; difficulties of updating and maintaining large quantities of data from different sources.
- Availability of fare information and ticket booking capabilities are limited.
- Limited on-trip information services to travellers.
- Limited use of dynamic and real-time data in journey re-planning services.
The WISETRIP system aims to address the above stated limitations by offering door-to-door multimodal Journey planning and personalised travel information services throughout the entire journey. The provision of personalised information is a key feature of the system since it offers the users the capability to store any itineraries and select the types of alerts they need to receive in any phase of the journey. The system addresses on-trip re-planning and travel information needs through providing the user with alerts regarding delays or disruptions affecting their journey. The system also addresses the limited geographical and modal coverage of existing systems by offering the user the capability to plan international journeys covering all segments of the journey. Re-planning of any journey may be done by mobile phone.
The system provides the capability to integrate new Journey planners under the condition of building appropriate communication layers according to relevant specifications. The geographical and modal coverage of the system may be further enhanced by integrating international, national or urban Journey planners covering different areas and modes. Fare information and ticket booking capabilities are also integrated in the system through the provision of the appropriate web links to the booking engines for any part of the journey.
The concept of interconnected multimodal Journey planners into a unified service is in its own a case of uniqueness and innovation towards Journey planning. Though similar attempts have been recorded in the past, emphasis has mostly been on interconnecting different planning engines. Urban transport planning remains outside the context of the problem. It builds and combines fields of innovation sourced by participating algorithms within the connected Journey planning engines.
WISETRIP goes beyond the state of the art by enabling different types of personalised services based on system automation, integration with real-time data providers and personal experience. Chosen trips are becoming personal trips and form the basis of an information cycle. Design and system knowledge remains trip-centric, which is the most substantial element of the personal data that are considered combined to personal preferences. More progress can be made when the system would also take into account environmental criteria. That way, intelligent trip strategies can be expressed and taken into account within the planning and re-planning processes of a trip.
Project implementation
User needs
A major task involved identification of services and functionalities that should be incorporated in the proposed system. The objective was to determine and assess a set of potential system functionalities on the basis of covering user needs while complying with the technological, institutional, and business oriented constraints.
At the first stage, a set of preliminary user needs has been identified taking into account the major features of various existing journey planners based on an international survey for internet-based journey planners and work performed within EC research projects. At a second stage, preliminary user needs were further assessed in terms of importance assigned to them by the end-users, through relevant surveys performed by each country represented in the project. The outcome of this process includes a list of specific functions and services for incorporation. A set of preliminary user needs was determined by analysing the features of the major existing journey planners and identifying the gaps or shortcomings in the services offered.
This was achieved by performing the following tasks:
- Literature review for relevant systems: Literature revealed some fundamental user requirements for developing a good journey planning system. This includes the function of multimodal and international transport information and delivery of real-time information to mobile phones. The rising demand from the customer point of view expects instant information.
- Review of previous EC research projects of direct interest to WISETRIP: IM@GINE-IT, EMOTION, EU SPIRIT and ITISS. Review proved that that there is an opportunity to provide a service for planning and executing multimodal journeys beyond regional and national boundaries.
- An international survey of experience with internet-based Journey planners resulted in information being provided for a total of 25 journey planners from 8 European countries plus China and Japan. Particularly interesting results have been investigated further in order to specify the major categories of institutional constraints and considerations prevailing for journey planners.
The analysis of the findings from the Journey planners survey, have led to the identification of the following limitations of existing systems:
- no international door-to-door multimodal journey planning service has been identified among the journey planners surveyed;
- availability of fare information is limited and is provided for specific transport services;
- the information offered is provided in the national language;
- there is a lack of real-time alerts to travellers now, but this is a feature that many journey planners envisage for the near future;
- limited dynamic and real-time data.
This set of generic needs is further elaborated by identifying potential services that cover one or more of them. A set of functionalities that covered the user needs was identified. A survey took place across five European countries (UK, Spain, Italy, Finland and Greece) and China, where end users were requested to determine and prioritise the associated system functionalities. The analysis of data collected was based on the application of the quality function deployment (QFD) method, which provides the following types of measures:
i) the overall weight of importance for each user need from the perspective of end-users;
ii) the overall weight of satisfaction of the end-users from the existing systems in covering each of the needs; and
iii) the overall priority calculated for each of the potential system functionalities. The measures were calculated for the entire set of data collected at each site, and for each country separately. The outcome of this process was a list of potential system functionalities rated with an importance score.
System architecture
The determination and analysis of user needs and the review of existing Journey planners that indicated the prevailing technical, business and institutional considerations and constraints were the main inputs towards the definition of the complete functional and data architecture of WISETRIP. A set of desirable and applicable system services have been determined and the relative workable architecture has been agreed. The architecture has divided the system into three fundamental layers:
- First layer - Participating services and source data
These are the existing systems, external information and the data environment including personal user data related to trip selection and user preferences.
- Second layer - Main system
Contains three main modules: The journey planning module, the personalisation module and the services module. The final journey plan is produced by the core system and is handed to the services for delivery or to the real-time decision module (RTDM) for further processing. The platform is interfacing to the first layer:
a) the core system interacts with the participating journey planners and
b) the RTDM personalisation system interfaces with external information sources and process the relative data as well as user relative data and profile.
The services of the platform are communicating with the devices of WISETRIP (third layer) through the intermediate 'Devices interfaces layer' that takes care of the open and harmonised interconnection to various devices. Knowledge of the platform includes data about participating transport networks and a trip cycle model that is being used to build the personal trip life cycle data of each traveller (first layer).
- Third layer - Distribution
The function of providing information and service to multiple users through various technological devices. The main role belongs to the devices and the user interfaces running on top of them.
The overall system consists of a number of task-oriented components that are logically grouped into four major functional components: user interface, WISETRIP core, WISETRIP personalisation and participating journey planners. Each of them is a relatively independent part of the architecture and has its functional scope, role and responsibilities. Depending on their attributes, they dynamically collaborate to support various uses cases and workflow scenarios. The 'WISETRUP architecture and data model' presents a reference model architecture that describes the way the planner (core system) is composed from other journey planning systems, the communication layers, the functional role of the decision mechanism and adaptation modules that are involved and the general methodologies, concepts, data architecture and data requirements, functional modules and ideas, as well as the tools and technologies that will be used to build up a fully functional prototype.
System implementation
Journey planners' adaptation interface
Currently, five journey planners (JP) are connected with WISETRIP, providing routing information for interurban or even urban trips within their areas of metropolitan, regional or national scale. The consortium has assured the continuity of the existing connections with the participating JPs and additionally is trying to attract new JPs to participate. The development effort for the connection of a JP is minimal. The fundamental condition for a connection with a new JP is to be able to provide reliable routing information for a city or a nation. From that point on, the JP has to establish a simple communication interface with WISETRIP so that it can provide partial trip responses to queries. The established interface needs to be light enough and does not impose heavy loads or require extreme system resources.
The WISETRIP coordination office is providing a Technical Guide for JPs who are willing to be integrated. The documentation guide presents the data requirements and the corresponding web services that should be implemented by each JP.
The mandatory connection and operation requirements include the following:
- Data requirements: The JP has to uniquely identify each node within its network and the international gateways in its network. The JP has to identify the supported transport modes and the names of operating companies and the relative means. Data have to be provided in at least two the language of the nation that JP is established and English.
- Services requirements: Three basic web services have to be provided by participating Journey planners to the WISETRIP system:
- Node validation: validates a specific node within a Journey planner's network. If the requested node is valid a flag indicating validity is raised. Otherwise a list of proposed alternatives is retrieved.
- Find trips: returns all combinations of trips from a specific Journey planner from origin to destination.
- Get international nodes for each node: returns all associated international nodes for a specific Interurban node from a particular journey planner. A list of international nodes is retrieved.
Besides the mandatory requirements, a JP could optionally provide more data and support the relative added value services.
In order to achieve maximum interoperability between WISETRIP and the participating JPs, the project development team has defined an xml scheme which has been designed to meet all requirements. WISETRIPWeb is a common protocol that should be followed by all participating JPs. However, adaptation layers can also be implemented if required.
Traveller specific services
The personalisation system performs planning functions and procedures according to the user's profile and criteria selected. It detects information that must be sent to each user, processes alerting messages, produces notifications or reschedules a specific trip segment when necessary.
The user registers in the system and creates a profile, giving personal details and declaring preferences on transportation modes, services he wants to subscribe to, type and occurrence of notifications to be received, etc.
For each trip in which the user is interested, the following services can be provided via email or SMS:
- notification on disturbances;
- trip redesign;
- validate trip;
- real-time interaction with the system.
These services are indicative. An extensive set of personalised services has been defined, implemented and provided by the system, always with the users' acquiescence. Trip life cycle model takes into account the different periods of registered trips that constitute the trip life cycle model. Based on these data, the decision module builds a timetable with scheduled events and notifications, according to which up-to-date information is 'pushed' to the user. Information is analysed and according to the trips cycles the RTDM sets of one or more notifications for one or more users. The trip life cycle manager is identified as a separate component, part of the RTDM, and includes functions related to personalised data. The RTDM is the kernel of the personalisation system layer. This module is based on events. It communicates with the other modules and layers of the system via web services. The communication flow between RTDM and other modules in WISETRIP is bidirectional.
One of the main functionalities of the RTDM is to manage and monitor all active trips of WISETRIP. To achieve this, each trip has its own trip management process: every time an active trip is detected a new TripManager object is created for managing the trip. The manager will control the whole trip, generate a list with relevant scheduled and unscheduled events and define when and how to send each notification message. Another characteristic of the RTDM module is the possibility for to the user to subscribe only to those services he is interested in. This will be defined at the beginning of the process and can be modified during the whole trip. In order to develop a flexible and adaptable system, The RTDM has been designed to work with events. Therefore, it keeps track of each trip by creating and manipulating different types of events. The advantage of using this system is the possibility to add new functionalities to the system in the mid-term future. RTDM manages several types of scheduled and unscheduled events.
The following list presents events that can occur in a trip and the way they can be processed:
- Scheduled notification (scheduled event) is used for sending a text message to a traveller and is generated by the service subscriptions of the trip.
- Segment validation (scheduled event) is carried out for checking if a given trip segment is still scheduled by the JP that originally provided it. If the validated segment remains as originally scheduled, no action is needed. In the case the validated segment is no longer scheduled as was originally provided, the changes and disturbances produced have to be checked.
- JP segment disturbance, trip segment disturbance, trip traveller position (unscheduled event) have in common that they notify a disturbance in one of the scheduled trip segments or in the expected traveller position. In these cases the possible consequences of the events have to be evaluated.
- Trip modified (unscheduled event): means that an existing trip has been modified or that a new trip has been created. It is possible that the real-time options of the trip have been changed. In this case, the trip manager will reload the trip information from the database and will recalculate the list of scheduled trip events.
Open layer for interface development
User interface is strongly influenced by the fact that WISETRIP services must be accessible through different devices. In order to reach the widest possible target audience, specialised front-end interfacing mechanisms have been developed which are capable of delivering content for multiple devices. Currently, three such mechanisms are available: a web interface, a native application that can be installed into any mobile device running Windows Mobile Professional operating system and a mobile interface suitable for iPhone Safari browser. These interfaces need to handle interaction with the user in a way that is consistent across various types of end devices. Therefore, depending on the user's device's capabilities, the system functionality can be extended by plugging in new user interface components with the form of add-ons that will not affect or impact the overall system.
An open, extensible and customisable user interface system has been designed, where each pluggable user interface component can consume functionality offered by other components in a controlled and determined manner through service-oriented interfaces. The information requirements of the user interface are exposed by the WISETRIP core with in form of well-defined service interfaces. Such services include the authentication of the user, the trip finder service, the node validation service, the user profiling services and many others. The user interface interacts with the personalisation system to request specialised trip services. An xml scheme and relative wsdl have been defined supporting the provision of all available web services in a uniform and open way. The user interface acts as the consumer of these web services, creating client stubs that shield network infrastructure diversifications, while also using address identifiers known as endpoints to locate these services. These services are available under a known set of credentials to prevent unauthorised disclosure.
This loosely coupled integration between WISETRIP core, the personalisation system and the user interface promotes flexibility that is crucial in the system due to the large diversity presented in the user interface components. The high degree of independence imposed by web services between components allow the replacement of components or even their change, without having to apply reflective changes. Therefore, the user interface can be extended with new components that integrate new technologies allowing for seamless transition of enhanced functionality to the system by exploiting the existing functionality of the underlying service. The three front-end interfacing mechanisms implemented are using the one and single wsdl providing either the whole set of available web services or part of them.
Performance
In parallel with the implementation of the system components, laboratory testing took place for the assessment of the technical performance of the various functionalities and services of the system. Any discrepancy of the system performance from standards set by the developers initiated a process for refining and fixing the functions, creating the degradation of the system performance and thus leading to a technically reliable and a robust system. The technical assessment of the system was aimed at verifying the integrity, stability, and computational time efficiency of the functions and services comprising the system.
The assessment of the system functions was based on measuring and assessing their performance under 37 technical indicators grouped into three categories:
- technical reliability indicators assessing the robustness of the system functions;
- information consistency indicators assessing the capability of functions to provide consistent alerts and trip itineraries to users;
- response time indicators assessing the computational time required by the functions to process requests; the technical assessment of the services was based on assessing 20 indicators grouped in two major categories:
- technical reliability indicators assessing the robustness and integrity of the services offered by the system;
- time efficiency indicators assessing the computational efficiency of the time-critical services.
The assessment was performed through the analysis of data collected from a series of lab trials of functions. Hypothesis testing was performed in order to validate the technical reliability and response time efficiency of the functions and services implemented.
The data analysis for technical reliability indicators proved that the system functions and services respond to requests providing consistent information, with a minimum success rate of 98 %. Data analysis shows that the computational time for processing alerts was negligible (less than 5 ms), while the time required for itinerary planning was an estimated 57 seconds under a medium level operational workload. It has been verified that the system offers an exhaustive list of alternative feasible itineraries for any trip request, created by combining intermediate itineraries provided by the participating JPs. The average estimated time of 57 seconds required for an itinerary planning is considered as an acceptable time. However, the time requirements for responding to a trip request consist of time components which are beyond the system's control and occasionally become the reason of a time increase. WISETRIP developers and the participating JPs tried to optimise times relative to the nodes validation process and data transfer. Trips caching is activated under certain circumstances and in this case the itinerary planning response time is limited to 1-2 ms.
Use of the platform
After laboratory testing and system refinement, the prototype became stable and reliable enough for real-life demonstration. Demonstration was accomplished in two stages: the pre-demonstration phase and the public demonstration phase. The whole demonstration period lasted about six months and took place at five validation sites. The pre-demonstration phase was carried out by a panel of professional testers, aiming to test the capabilities and user acceptance of the platform and services in a controlled environment, and to derive useful indications and feedback from the trials that may help in consolidating the system functionalities and services before starting real-life public user trials. Based on the results of pre-demonstration phase, the platform has been updated and improved.
After updating the platform, the second phase of the demonstration started. This demonstration aimed to evaluate the services in real-life conditions involving a large number of public users. The purpose of this phase was to extend the pre-demonstration user acceptance evaluation and assessment, addressing the following main assessment categories:
- user acceptance, aiming at assessing the non-functional features of the system from the users' perspective;
- willingness to pay, aiming at investigating the potential users' willingness to use the system under various types and levels of charges.
About 2700 users visited the web interface and 608 from them filled questionnaires addressing not only users' acceptance but also their willingness to pay. Although the demonstration phase has typically ended, users are continuously visiting the web interface and it is indicative that until today there are more than 16 300 page views (4000 trip searches).
Evaluation results
Apart from the laboratory testing and the technical assessment of the system's functionalities and services, the evaluation process contained two supplementary types of assessment:
1. user acceptance assessment aiming at exploring system performance from users' perspective;
2. willingness to pay assessment for specifying the user's willingness to use the system under various levels of charges.
The user acceptance assessment aimed to assess the non-functional features of the information services, including clarity and sufficiency of the information provided and to explore the impacts of the system in the cognitive effort and the time required for journey planning and the traveller's uncertainty during the execution of a trip. The analysis of the ratings collected under each user acceptance metric were analysed by estimating the median and performing a sign test for specifying the lowest value for the actual median. The assessment of user acceptance has been performed in both pre-demonstration phase, and the public demonstration phase. Similar results emerged in both stages. User acceptance assessment confirmed that the information provided by the services is clear and sufficient. Interaction of users with the system services was found user-friendly while the system was expected to reduce the time and cognitive effort requirements for Journey planning. The system applications were expected to reduce the travellers' uncertainty during their journey.
The objective of the assessment of the willingness to pay was to explore the willingness of various categories of users to use the services offered under alternative levels of charges. A stated choice model was developed and calibrated in order to assess the response of the users to alternative levels of charges attributed to the system. The implementation of this type of assessment has been performed through conducting a stated preference survey throughout two European countries (Greece and UK) and China. A major finding is that a substantial percentage of potential end-users are willing to use the system services for a charge. Based on the details of the analysis was found to be a statistically significant parameter.
The coefficients of cost in all formulas were negative implying that the increase in the price has a negative impact on the potential user's utility. Among the characteristics of the respondents, only travel frequency was found statistically significant in all sites, implying that travel frequency has a positive impact on the utility perceived by potential users. Results provide useful input for projecting revenues for the system, taking into account the level of acceptance of the system encountered within the various users groups identified within the analysis. Although exploring the options for setting up a viable business model for operating WISETRIP is beyond the scope of this document, the results provided through the analysis of the willingness to pay indicate that the proposed system has a potential of economic sustainability.
Potential impact
Potential impact and main dissemination activities and exploitation of results
Socioeconomic impact and the wider societal implications
This project confirmed the wider benefits that integrated a door-to-door integrated JP can offer to citizens. In the longer term the outcome should contribute to improving the EC economic position: it enables business travellers to plan their journeys more efficiently, thus leaving more time available for work and achieving more efficient management of uncertainty, stimulating tourists to explore new places, resulting in regional economic growth and contributing to resolving the crisis caused by extraordinary conditions by providing alternative routes and means of transport. Efficient spread of knowledge within situations of crisis will be the key to avoid tiring situations by enabling more efficient reaction based on a quicker response to the user's need. Similar benefit and impact is expected when changes in schedule or vessel assignment are known to the user. Efficient traveller awareness across unexpected conditions and trip changes is the major impact of WISETRIP. The user can make travelling more straightforward and change management will be easier to accomplish. Avoidance of tiring situations is among the most important impacts. The fact that the project has wide European exposure has enabled it to reach a wide audience. In the future, its potential presence within the most popular and leading mobile devices of the world can boosts its use within the EU and worldwide.
The involvement of multiple types of criteria within the trip decision and trip redesign process allows the availability and promotion of many traveller scenarios, giving emphasis to public transport within urban areas. It is common that the traveller is not aware of feasible and cost-effective means to move within the urban edge of an international trip. Linking urban ways with international railway/airline/ferry trip is a means to promote public transport; a necessary promotion towards transport with less CO2 emissions and aiding modal switch. WISETRIP has contributed to the acceptance and use of integrated traveller services. The WISETRIP service links JP systems and real-time data providers and brings them to the service of the traveller. It widens their use and accelerates their positive impact to transport and mobility. A consequence would be to push JSs into enhanced visibility and motivate them to increase their quality in respect to the availability of real-time information. WISETRIP is also contributing to the realisation of various EU-Policies with respect to sustainable transport.
Main dissemination activities
WISETRIP's dissemination and promotion activities have been designed to address and meet the main project objectives of promoting JP services and achieve the largest possible resonance of project results in order to favour large international dissemination and take-up of the approach. Two main dissemination and promotion levels have been identified: a local and a national dissemination level and an EC and International level. The levels moved in parallel during the project development. The first level has represented the immediate field of dissemination and promotion activities for both project and post-project phases. Fundamental to success was to gain interest, involvement and trust of all concerned users.
At second level, WISETRIP was presented in European and international events favouring the adoption of good solutions and good practices identified in other pilot projects. At the same time, important relationships were established. WISETRIP dissemination and promotion activities have involved a coordinated set of instruments and tools, with a mix of regularly timed actions and asynchronous activities: The design of the project logo and general image, in order to show fast the purpose of the project and attract the interest of people, the build-up of the official public website, design and dissemination of project brochure and (e-) newsletters, the external users group, a project workshop.
As a major dissemination channel, the WISETRIP workshop 'A real-time, multi-source and multimodal personal trip planning service' was organised, participation to national or international events and exhibitions, presenting project approach and distributing the dissemination material, research publications in the form of two research papers, liaison with other projects and the link to the platform on local JPs Home page as well as its presence on Facebook.
Exploitation of results
To achieve wide exploitation of the results, a two-fold approach should be followed consistently:
1. Continuation of the system with the best possible advancements and with continuous geographic expansion should be assured.
2. Commercialisation of the service should be sought. In that context exploitation planning considerations that were analysed within the project framework, should be turned into a roadmap of actions.
One of the objectives was to assure system availability and operation after the end of the project, in order to be able to follow and plan its route towards expansion and productive operation, and perhaps even commercialisation.
In that context the consortium is willing to do the following:
- Maintain and operate all major software modules of the platform responsible for trip searching and the RTDM personalisation system, assuring that they will remain up and running;
- Advance platform development and features based either on self-funding or on a potential EC funding. Based mainly on the demonstration and evaluation findings a set of advanced services has already been defined and planned to be implemented by the development team after the end of the project. Development costs will be initially covered by self-funding, while in the same the consortium is exploring relevant calls for proposals to apply for EC funding.
- Continue dissemination activities. Beneficiaries are active in the areas of transport and tourism, participate in conferences, exhibitions and other events and have opportunities to continuously disseminate project results. Communication with the external user group (EUG) that has been consolidated at the framework of the project will be kept active and extended to address also journey planners and transport operators.
It is clear that none of the actions will keep the platform in operation if the JPs will not provide their routing information. Therefore, the consortium has assured the continuity of the existing connection with the participating JPs and additionally tries to attract and invite as many new JPs as possible. The action plan to achieve these objectives has been set and is ongoing within the first semester of 2011.
While the system is operating and expanding, exploitation considerations have been addressed through the exploitation tasks carried out during the project. These tasks identified the dominant actors of the system and compared the variant feasible business models.
According to the outcome of this work the alternatives exploitation routes for WISETRIP could be compliant to the following business models:
A. A marketing entity model: WISETRIP becomes a portal. Its power lies into a large population of visits. Revenues come from the advertisement and promotion of TOs and JPs or other destination based services. Hits, visits and placement of specific links should be billed according to a certain commercial policy.
B. eTourism agent model: WISETRIP becomes an electronic distributor, a sales channel of ticketing services. It acts as an agent of cooperating transport operators or other ticketing sales organisation that offer an online ticketing interface to WISETRIP so that its user can buy tickets for the chosen services. WISETRIP receives a commission from the services sold.
C. Subscription / usage based tariffing model: WISETRIP is a value-added service provided to travellers. It provides online and continuous information for planned and registered trips. In this case, revenue is expected from usage. Registrations and / or messages might be charged under a certain policy that should be attractive and rational, remaining in accordance with the monitored willingness to pay.
We can consider two different cases for the subscription model:
- End customer subscriber model (B2C model): The traveller himself is the user who registers and pays for the usage;
- B2B subscription model (B2B model): The user is a travel and tourism office who acts for the traveller's benefit. The tourism office can use the system to provide value-added service to improve customer relation.
D. Combination of the above: The selection of one of the three abovementioned exploitation directions does not mean that the WISETRIP provider cannot choose to combine two of them or even all three directions. The most obscure combination will be the case for WISETRIP to be an eTourism agent selling tourism services and in parallel providing services to tourism professionals under the B2B case of subscription model.
All models were compared in terms of risks to fail, extra development and investment needs, operation expenses. Though the exploitation plan described and compared four different business models, combination of models is feasible. The combination of the agent model with the B2C model provides a promising field for commercial development.
The main reasoning for this combination is based on the following facts:
- B2C and agent models are both oriented to the end customer, the traveller.
- B2C model provides value-added service on top of the selected trip, which can be the purchased trips from the WISETRIP electronic agent. The two models supplement each other's services.
- The two models share significant parts of the investment and operation requirements. These are the user support mechanism and the marketing activities.
- Integration with ticketing providers or other agencies makes the system more popular and the B2C service become more popular.
The merged model can include higher revenue forecasts without imposing costs up to the sum of the costs from the two models. To become effective, WISETRIP should reach a mature exploitation stage. Each business model imposes different levels of investment while all of them require the system to be expanded at European and international level. Such expansion requires the integration of more JPs and the inclusion of more real-time data and ticketing providers. The main problem is the wide variance in the level and quality of information provided by national JP systems. Further research and development is required to broaden the number of JP systems involved and also to get full multimodal coverage provided in a consistent manner.
WISETRIP also faced the problem of new technologies becoming available during the design phase. iPhones and Android smartphones were not known at the start of the project yet by the project's end these covered 90 % of the smart phone market. Before WISETRIP can be taken to the market, greater partnership is required to bring mobile device, networks, operators and authorities into discussions and development. If this can be achieved, the potential is a global market.
Project website: http://www.WISETRIP-eu.org
The website is the main public information source for the project. It publishes information about the project, its description, mission and objectives, current activities, publishable results and deliverables, news and media announcements and material.
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