University of Queensland begins fleet management data research

The University of Queensland has begun a three-year research project to analyse data for the fleet management industry.

The project, which is called In-memory moving objects analytics for real-time business applications, is designed to make sense of data generated by GPS devices, smartphone applications which use on-board sensors, and intelligent transportation systems.

SAP has supplied the University with a HANA 1TB in-memory platform which will allow exploitation of large data sets and lead to a deeper understanding on the potential of real time analytical computations.

According to SAP, the research will lead to targeted services for its fleet management customers who can carry out real-time analysis to book the best services for specific transportation needs.

University of Queensland professor of computer science, Xiaofang Zhou, told CIO Australia that there is a huge amount of trajectory data generated by systems such as GPS units in trucks or taxis.

It plans to combine trajectory data with other sources such as maps and speed camera data.

“The question here is what kind of business intelligence we can get from this data. For example, truck companies want to monitor how many hours their drivers are doing before they take a break,” he said.

“We can also identity traffic information in real time such as the speeds drivers are travelling on a particular segment of road at any one time.”

In addition to the 1TB in-memory, researchers have access to a 12TB machine in Australia.

The university is currently in discussions with SAP and a government department on using spatial data in an emergency response scenario.

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