Going beyond automatic vehicle location
Database Maintainer
Early in the school year it is normal for student transportation data, routing maps and scheduling tables to be spread across multiple locations in most student transportation offices. There exist many duplicated tables due to different operators or the same operator operating at different times, and duplicate records due to wrong spellings and other reasons. The inconsistence and duplication cause serious data maintenance problems. Therefore it is imperative to consolidate and clean-up disorganized data so as to have one consistent and standard database to work on.
Moreover, the student population at Detroit Public Schools has high mobility due to yearly upgrading, graduation, and parent moves. For example, it has been indicated that, over a given school year, as many as 30% of the students change addresses. This high rate of mobility makes routing school buses an ever changing operation. Therefore the geo-student database is a dynamic system. There is a constant need for synchronization between student's data, school programs and buildings data, and the derived bus stops, runs and routes. However most student information management systems do not keep the information synchronized on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis. This deficiency in the database management has caused lots of difficulties in keeping data consistent and current among different subsystems or user groups with the resulting impact being complaints about service.
To rectify this problem, a three step strategic implementation plan is adopted in DPS- ISTMS: firstly, to consolidate and resolve discrepancies between various sets of geographic and student data; secondly, to work out the business rules and operational procedures to keep synchronization between these data sets; thirdly, to develop computer routines to automate the synchronization processes.
AVL/GPS
Going beyond tracking, "Where's the bus?" is the goal of DPS-ISTMS. The DPS-ISTMS is built on available, cutting-edge, technology and seeks to provide information that tells the operations managers if the bus is where it is supposed to be when it is supposed to be there. The GPS mobile modems acquired at DPS have additional input and output capabilities to install sensors that are important to effectively manage bus fleet.
Several experiments and pilot installations have been designed to test sensors for door opening, compliance with railroad crossing regulations, no child left on the bus, student identification swipe-card, student biometric reader, engine idle time length, instances of vehicle exceeding the speed limit, hard acceleration, hard braking, instances of engine shut-off, and engine fault code readouts.