Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to examine whether mining and analyzing social media data can be a powerful tool in the transportation domain. A survey of the literature based on the existing uses of social media in transportation is conducted; opportunities and barriers are also presented for the subject. Analysis of social media can provide valuable information regarding incident detection, mobility, and activity patterns as well as users’ opinions about different transport modes. The issues that need to be addressed are not few, with most important ones being the advanced mining and linguistic techniques required for the extraction of information, the reliability of the data collected, and the sample bias. The study concludes with recommendations in relation to the existing gaps in the literature, such as the need to create a transport-oriented lexicon to facilitate the process of collecting transport-related information from social media, use of social media during transport planning and operation, and finally, potential use of qualitative indicators on public transportation issues regarding the perceived level of service.
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Acknowledgments
The current paper is based on the research conducted in the framework of a research project funded by the program “Research Projects for Excellence IKY/Siemens.”
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Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 144 • Issue 4 • April 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 9, 2017
Accepted: Oct 3, 2017
Published online: Jan 27, 2018
Published in print: Apr 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Jun 27, 2018
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