A mobile location-based vehicle fleet management service application

The convergence of multiple technologies, including the Internet, wireless communications, geographic information system, location technologies, and mobile devices, has given rise to new types of information utilities that may be referred as mobile location-based services (LBS). LBS can be described as applications that exploit knowledge about where an information device (user) is located. For example, location information can be used to provide automobile drivers with optimal routes to a geographic destination. Specifically, we examine a context where the people need to move physically from one location to another via taxis. In this scenarios the user is in control of the location information associated with the mobile device. However, problems arise when a fleet management application use that dynamic information to provide the best taxi assignment. This paper presents a new approach to the taxi assignment problem in a mobile environment based on optimization and simulation. Our specific interest is to predict the impact of the interaction between the assignment algorithm and fleet management in the mobile environment on the desired quality of service for the mobile users. The paper also discusses the current approach and limitations of the new approach and some simulation results, such as average transport time and unserved mobile users average. Finally, we present some conclusions.