Bus Scheduling including Dynamic Events

Abstract: Modern transportation systems should be designed according to the requirements of their passengers, while considering operational costs for the managing organizations,as well as being environmentally friendly. The main objective of this work is to provide a realistic simulation of a transportation system, capable of identifying connections among the road network of operation areas, creating bus lines composedof multiple connected bus stops, simulating travel requests registered by potential passengers, as well as generating routes and timetables for bus vehicles, while taking into consideration factors which could affect the predefined schedule, includingun predictable events (e.g., traffic accidents) or dynamic levels of traffic density.The implemented bus management system is able to generate timetables dynamically,introducing a reasoning mechanism capable of evaluating travel requests based on dynamic clustering techniques, while offering the opportunity to its administrator to make decisions regarding the number of generated timetables, operating bus vehicles,passengers per timetable, waiting time of passengers, and processing time. In addition,the routes of bus lines are generated or updated dynamically, while taking into consideration real-time traffic data and evaluating parameters, such as covered distance or travelling time, in order to identify the most effective connectionsbetween the bus stops of each bus line and make adjustments to the corresponding timetables. Finally, the number of operating bus vehicles that are required in order to transport the passengers of each bus line is estimated, leading to a more efficient distribution of available resources.