Information Systems Able To Support and Improve Transportation Systems Essay

Information Systems Able To Support and Improve Transportation Systems Before, During and After the Olympic Games in London This Summer - Essay Example The situation gets tricky whenever huge numbers of people are expected to move around the city at the same time. The summer Olympics presents one of the many transport challenges that London faces every so often. The fact that London started coming up a city long before cars were invented implies that its streets are suited for foot rather than the millions of cars that are likely to fill its streets during the Olympics. In fact, it has been predicted that the summer Olympics will see the largest ever crowd to fill the streets of London. Because of the expected visitors, the government and private organisations have embraced for hitherto unseen transport conditions and problems such as congestion. For London to deliver a great Olympics, the city and the country must be kept moving, prompting the government to urge businesses and the public to consider their travel options ahead of and during the games. Fortunately, advances in information technologies and information systems such as cloud technology will ensure that unnecessary movements are not only restricted during the games but also controlled by encouraging people such as journalists to use other technologies to capture events rather than be present at the venues (Emmelmann et al., 2010). That is, in addition to keeping commuters in their homes, journalists’ likelihood to stay at one area for long will be high as information systems will ensure they capture through live-streams, most of the events from one location while they remain at the venue of the events that interest them most. This paper explores the support that information systems will give to the transport system before, during and after the London Olympic games. Intelligent Transport Technologies A range of information technologies could prove useful in the management of the transport system during the London Olympics. From simple and basic information systems such as traffic control systems, car navigation, message signs, speed cameras a nd automatic number plate recognition to more complex technologies such as CCTV systems and other IT applications, which monitor data and feedbacks, information systems will be quite useful to the transport system during the Olympics in London. Among the more sophisticated information technologies that monitor data and feedbacks include parking guidance systems, bridge deicing systems and weather information and technologies that enable comparison with historical data (Chowdhury & Sadek, 2003). Computational technologies such as floating car data or floating cellular data are relatively cheap data collection techniques that the Transport for London (TfL) could use to support transport systems during the Olympics. The data collected by these technologies relate to travel time and speeds of vehicles on streets, highways, freeways, and other transportation routes (IanVisits, 2012). There are three major methods by which information technologies may be used to gather transport data. The se techniques include the triangulation, the vehicle re-identification and the GPS-based methods. In modern times, most car users travel with their phones in their cars. Information on the presence of these phones is always transmitted to mobile networks whenever there are no voice connections. That is, as a vehicle moves, the signals on the mobile phones therein also move. Through the analysis of these mobile phone signals using triangulation, the obtained data could be used determine and control traffic flow (Chowdhury & Sadek, 2003). The triangulation method is thus quite an effective approach to supporting the transport system in London during the Olympics. The second technique, the vehicle re-i