Create Journey Planning mashups for urban exploration and Trip Coordination using Open Data

The Data Discovery Challenge is organised by IDA to support Singapore's vision to be the world’s first Smart Nation where data and analytics will play a critical role. The challenge seeks to encourage innovative mashup of public and private datasets to generate new value, enable smarter enterprises and improve how we live, work, learn and interact.

The Brief

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) launched the Data Discovery Challenge as the first competition to utilize a federated dataset discovery mechanism i.e. Federated Dataset Registry (FDSR). The registry was launched as part of the Data-as-a-Service pilot in October 2014 which seeks to address the challenge of discovering datasets in the private sector. Through the Data Discovery Challenge, IDA aims to raise awareness to enterprises on the benefits of pooling and making available private datasets to bring new insights and values.

In this challenge, participants are required to use dataset(s) from IDA’s FDSR and integrate it with any public or private datasets to develop workable prototype data visualisation, mobile or web applications. The submission to this challenge should be a workable prototype data visualisation, mobile or web applications that can:

• Increase efficiency or productivity of an enterprise or an industry vertical;
• Develop a new revenue stream or business model; or
• Improve the way we live, work, learn and interact.

The Data Discovery Challenge opened from 11 December 2014 and submissions were closed on 26 January 2015.

Idea: Project Venn

Intersection of space and time.

Exploring and getting around is an essential part of people’s behaviour in a city. We find the nearest drive-thru to satisfy our late night craving or hop on a bus to try the dessert that has been the talk of the town. While transport maps and timetables help people work out how to get from A to B using various forms of transport, they often do not help when you are not familiar with the area or do not know yet what journey you want to make.

This is where there is a need to analyse and understand quickly and easily places we consider– often in minutes rather than meters because we perceive ‘how long’ better than ‘how far’. An hour on the bus tells us a lot more than 47 km. This becomes even more challenging in situation where there are multiple people involved or considerations in deciding course of actions. Understanding constraints involved has a big influence on the efficiency with which they can be solved.

We created Venn as a web-based application travel time maps also known as isochrones geographical reachability maps to solve above urban exploration and resource coordination issues.

Isochrone maps (greek: iso = equal, chronos = time) are line connecting points that have the same travel time from a specified location, i.e. which can be reached within the specified time or less. Using colours and contour lines they show constraint on how long it takes to travel between one particular place and every other place in the area using chosen mode of transport. Our interactive isochrone map visualization allows people to select areas of interest, or explore temporal mobility patterns based on modes of transport, travel time and other preferences.