Advanced Mobility and Transport Engineering

Chapter 2

An Agent-based Information System for Searching and Creating Mobility-aiding Services ¹

2.1. Introduction

The satisfaction of clients who are looking for information services is significantly hindered — in terms of accessibility and reliability — by the constant and rapid increase in heterogeneous data that are distributed throughout large-scale networks. In particular, it is not easy to implement the applications on such extended networks, not only because of unexpected variations that might arise (bottlenecks, crashes, etc.) but also because of the limited bandwidth. This shortcoming is mainly explained by the fact that an increasing number of users access information simultaneously and is worsened by the increase in information demand (especially in the form of Web services).

In this chapter, we will focus on the field of mobility and transportation, trying to accompany and support the passenger throughout the journey in the most efficient and pleasant manner [ZGA 07]. This support is expressed by the availability of services, connected or related to transport, that correspond to reliable, interactive and instant information, which can be found on the so-called extended mobility-aiding services network (EMASN). For example, such a service can mean anything from the calculation of an itinerary in a multimodal transport network, to weather forecast information, cultural information, tourist information or availability of parking spaces (see Chapter 3).

In this context, ...