IIT Roorkee wins Smart Move Innovative Urban Mobility Challenge

The team developed an interactive passenger information system to predict the crowding levels in the public transit system. 

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has won the Smart Move Innovative Urban Mobility Challenge organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) supported by the Smart Cities Mission, the National Institute of Urban Affairs, and GIZ India. The research team comprised Amit Agarwal, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, and students Arpit Shrivastava and Devesh Pratap Singh and Itisha Jain. Durga Shanker Mishra, secretary, MoHUA, awarded the IIT Roorkee team at the fourth annual Urban Mobility Conference of India, held at Sushma Swaraj Bhavan, New Delhi. The team developed an interactive passenger information system to predict the crowding levels in the public transit system. 

Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, “The work of the winning team amplifies the attractiveness of public transport. This will reduce our dependence on private motorised transport which is an important goal to address the adverse environmental impact of private transport.” 

The team developed an interactive passenger information system (PIS) and integrated a route planning algorithm, real-time crowding levels. The final product consists of an Android application for the end-users and a web page to replicate the digital passenger information board installed at bus stops. The route planning algorithm integrates advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence models trained on the historical ticketing data to predict the crowding levels in the public transit system. For real-time occupancy of the public transport vehicles using CCTV footage, the product is complemented by computer vision models. For a test case, raw data was facilitated by the Capital Region Urban Transportation (CRUT) Bhubaneshwar. The NIUA team provided various inputs to improve the final product. 

About 80 teams participated in the Smart Move Innovative Urban Mobility Challenge organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in November 2020. After the vigorous screening, the top 10 teams were shortlisted to develop the product and then present their work in front of the jury in October 2021. The ingenious ideas were evaluated on the basis of various parameters such as distinctly contextual, implementable, scalable, time-bound, practical, financially feasible, measurable (objectively verifiable), and social impact on urban mobility. 

The top three proposals selected in the challenge will be provided contracts jointly worth INR 20,00,000 with a minimum contract value of INR 5,00,000. Additionally, the winning teams will have an opportunity to present their solution to the Smart Cities Mission, the Government of India. 

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