Conference Proceedings (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

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An adaptive transportation prediction model for the informal public transport sector in Africa
(IEEE, 2014-10) Ndibatya, I.; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Quinn, J.
The informal public transport sector in Sub-Saharan Africa is responsible for transporting the overwhelming majority of the workforce. Often, passengers have to wait for hours for taxis to coincidentally pass by to pick them up, making the transport mode notoriously inefficient. Despite its relevance and impact, the sector is afforded little attention in terms of regulation, development and organization, giving rise to a complex and inefficient system that affects millions of people. In fact, little is known about the industry. To advance understanding of this system, minibus taxis were equipped with tracking devices in this study. Tracking data was then used to develop a model that describes the transport network – essentially finding patterns in the apparent chaos for the potential benefit of its users. The adaptive model uses unsupervised learning to predict the informal stages in the city and provide travelers with intelligence on the best time and place to get transport, thereby reducing the waiting time at the taxi rank and the informal roadside stops. Experimental results show 70.4% model accuracy in dynamically learning the taxi behavior and accurately predicting the best places to get taxis at a given time of the day.
ICT-enabled solutions for smart management of water supply in Africa
(2014-12) Nel, P. J. C.; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Van der Merwe, B.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Pervasive and ubiquitous technologies that include mobile device applications, machine to machine communications, and cloud computing, are increasingly used for cost-effective data aggregation and information dissemination. Recently, this trend has started to gain momentum in the water sector and is being used for various management and monitoring tasks, such as remote leakage detection, automated meter reading and enhanced usage feedback to water users. This paper analyses the challenges faced by various stakeholders (consumers, utilities, etc.) in the water supply industry. Application of the said technologies is then proposed to address these unique challenges and the varying data needs of all stakeholders. An example solution, with a mobile device application and supporting cloud computing solution, is developed and presented as a proof-of-concept to further illustrate the potential use of ICT for water supply management.
The impact of average speed over distance (ASOD) systems on speeding patterns along the R61
(2014-12-10) Ebot Eno Akpa, N. A.; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Sinclair, M.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Speeding is considered to be a major contributing cause of road fatalities in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa in particular. The minibus taxi industry is a vibrant yet partly informal sector of public transport in South Africa, which has been associated with speed-related road fatalities. Although countermeasures have been implemented to address speeding, they have not led to significant reduction in road fatalities and adherence to legal speed limits. Among the countermeasures deployed on some highways is the Average Speed Over Distance (ASOD) system which uses cameras to enforce speed limits. In this paper, historical probe data is used to evaluate the impact of the ASOD system on speed profiles of passenger vehicles. The data also consists of speed, time and location information gathered by navigation and fleet management devices that were installed in minibus taxis. The evaluation is based on spatial differentiation (the impact on the enforcement site with ASOD versus the control site without ASOD) and time differentiation (the impact before and during ASOD enforcement). For passenger vehicles, the results show that the presence of ASOD systems caused a reduction in mean speeds and ensured compliance with speed limits at enforcement and control sites. On the other hand, the system appears to have no influence on minibus taxis, with high, yet similar average speeds measured in the enforcement and control sites during ASOD enforcement.
Informal public transport -- Safety measures
(2014-07) Zeeman, A. S.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
The informal transport industry in Sub-Saharan Africa is notoriously dangerous, leading to many fatalities annually. This paper presents an innovative way of monitoring driver behaviour, in real-time, by taking into account road design standards and vehicle dynamics. A theoretical model is presented that combines acceleration and speed data into an erratic driving detection algorithm. The model presents a novel use of commonly used civil engineering principles, used in road design. Evaluation of the models, using actual minibus taxi data, demonstrates that it successfully detect reckless driving. An online platform is presented to visualise the tracked vehicle and the driving behaviour.
An intelligent water heater with wi-fi access to support demand-side management
(2015-01) Brown, J. W. K.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
In the current climate of energy shortages and attempts to reduce electricity consumption, demand-side management has proven to be effective and popular. One implementation of demand-side management has been to provide the end-user with control over the ubiquitous houshold water heater (called geysers in South Africa). This paper presents a novel way to interact with water heaters, in which water heater control and monitoring is provided on a website that is accessible through a Wi-Fi hotspot interface. Both of these are hosted by the processor that controls electricity supply, tank temperature, and water supply; and monitors electricity consumption, water consumption, inlet, outlet and tank temperatures. The proposed system also provides protection against inevitable mechanical failure of the water heater, by detecting leaks and bursts, and by stopping water and electricity supply in such scenarios. This paper shows that the proof of concept is realisable in terms of cost, functionality, and energy savings.
Modelling of inter-stop minibus taxi movements : using machine learning and network theory
(2014-12) Ndibatya, Innocent; Booysen, Marthinus J.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Minibus taxis provide affordable alternative transport for the majority of urban working population in Sub- Saharan Africa. Often, these taxis do not follow predefined routes in their endeavours to look for passengers. Frequently, they stop by roadsides to pick up passengers and sometimes go off the main route in an attempt to fill the taxi with passengers to make the trip profitable. In addition, the destinations are changed from time to time depending on the driver. This uncoordinated movement creates a web of confusion to would-be passengers. The key aspects that are not clear to the passengers include; where to get a taxi, the waiting time and the travel time to the destination. These conditions leave taxi passengers at a very big disadvantage. In this research, we applied the concepts of machine learning and network theory to model the movements of taxis between stops. The model can be used to compute the waiting times at the stops and the travel times to a specified destination. Twelve minibus taxis were tracked for 6 months. Density-based clustering was used to discover the formal and informal taxi stops, which were modelled into a flow network with the significant stops as nodes and the frequency of departures between nodes as edges representing the strength of connectivity. A data driven model was developed. From the model, we can predict the time a passenger will have to wait at a stop in order to get a taxi and the trip duration.
Proceedings of the first International Conference on the use of Mobile Informations and Communication Technology (ICT) in Africa UMICTA 2014, 9-10 December 2014, STIAS Conference Centre, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-12) Booysen, Marthinus J.
The conference provides a common platform for academic and industry partners to share ideas, present existing work, and guide future work. Academic work will be presented after a rigorous peer-review process that includes constructive feedback. Academic sessions will be interspersed with open industry-focussed discussion sessions, where invited industry partners will participate. Four keynote addresses will be delivered, aimed at setting the scene for, and provide focus to the discussions. Mobile ICT has proven to be a useful means of addressing many of Africa's challenges, and continues to produce novel ways to improve the lives of the many the continent's inhabitants. We would like to use this conference to showcase some of the research that goes towards this goal. To try to make the research even more relevant and to progress it to implementation, we have invited our industry partners and have given them a platform to highlight their needs.
Recognition of driving manoeuvres using smartphone-based inertial and GPS measurement
(2014-12) Engelbrecht, Jarrett; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Van Rooyen, Gert-Jan
The ubiquitous presence of smartphones provides a new platform on which to implement sensor networks for ITS applications. In this paper we show how the embedded sensors and GPS of a smartphone can be used to recognize driving manoeuvres. Smartphone-based driving behaviour monitoring has applications in the insurance industry and for law enforcement. The proposed solution is suitable for real-time applications, such as driver assistance and safety systems. An endpoint detection algorithm is used on filtered accelerometer and gyroscope data to find the start- and endpoints of driving events. The relevant sensor data is compared against different sets of manoeuvre signal templates using the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm. A heuristic method is then used to classify a manoeuvre as normal or aggressive based on its speed and closest matching acceleration and rotation rate templates.
Saving on household electric water heating : what works best and by how much
(IEEE, 2017-12) Nel, P. J. C.; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Van der Merwe, B.
Electric heating of water for domestic use is a substantial component of total household energy costs. Thermal energy in a water heater is either used (as warm water) or lost to the environment. Various approaches to reduce the losses and improve the efficiency of these notoriously inefficient and costly water heaters have been proposed and are employed. However, given the complex factors at play, making sense of the savings approaches and choosing the right one for the right use case is not a simple task and often misunderstood. This paper addresses this problem by comparing some of the commonly employed approaches, including schedule control, change in set temperature, use of thermal insulation, and reduction in consumed volume. We also compare the impact of environmental factors, such as changing the ambient temperature around the water heater and the cold inlet temperature. The results show that for the consumption profiles and use cases evaluated, schedule control is the most effective, followed by insulation of the tank and piping. Combined, these two interventions save up to 25%. We also find that the effect of the temperature of the cold inlet water dwarfs that of the ambient temperature, is in line with other approaches, and means the installation status quo needs to be reconsidered.
Simple capacitive seat sensing for occupancy detection and passenger counting in minibus taxis
(2014-07) Zeeman, A. S.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
The informal public transportation sector in Sub-Saharan Africa contributes significantly to public transport, and yet little is known about passenger mobility patterns. We propose a low cost system to measure occupancy in a minibus taxi, and to improve understanding of passenger mobility in the taxi industry. A low cost capacitive proximity sensor for seat occupancy detection based on the loading mode capacitive sensing technique is designed and integrated with cellular communications to provide real-time information. The capacitive sensor uses a single electrode to detect an occupant. We use modules for a dynamic wireless system integration where sensors can be added or removed without modifications. A mathematical model of the capacitive sensor is developed to determine the capacitance on the sensor’s electrode. The occupied capacitance is double the unoccupied capacitance. Our results show that the proposed capacitive sensor can distinguish clearly between an unoccupied and occupied seat for multiple seats.

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