Ontology based performance evaluation of public transport systems Salima Mnif 1 Sarra Galoui Sabeur Elkosantini 2 Saber Darmoul 2 Lamjed Ben Said 1 mnifsalima@yahoo.fr sarragaloui@gmail.com selkosantini@ksu.edu.sa sdarmoul@ksu.edu.sa lamjed.bensaid@isg.rnu.tn 1 SOIE Laboratory, High Institute of Management of Tunis, University of Tunis, Tunisia 2 Industrial Engineering Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh, 11421, Saudi Arabia Abstract— offering high levels of quality of service (e.g. punctuality and frequency) and performance (e.g. effectiveness and efficiency) for users of public transport systems is a great challenge for governments and transportation authorities. Various research works have been conducted to develop criteria to evaluate the performance of Public Transport Systems (PTS). However, there is still a need to design and develop decision support tools that both encompass and take advantage of the increasing number and diversity of the suggested Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and performance evaluation methods. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a decision support system that relies on ontologies to represent, capture, store and use knowledge to evaluate the performance of PTS. An implementation of the system is also presented and discussed. Keywords- Ontology Engineering, Evaluation, Key Performance Indicators, Intelligent Transport System. I. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, governments and transportation authorities have to face increasing challenges to improve the mobility of citizens while controlling traffic congestion, guaranteeing safety and security, and offering high levels of performance and quality of service. Despite the spread and success of the implementation of public transport systems (PTS), it is becoming more and more difficult to guarantee high levels of performance and quality of service for passengers. This is mainly due to the size, complexity, and interaction between subcomponents of a PTS system, and to types, frequency and size of information, knowledge and decisions that have to be taken to manage such complex systems. Therefore, it becomes necessary to implement new intelligent decision support systems to assist authorities with the management and improvement of PTS. It is particularly important to be able to continuously evaluate the levels of performance and quality of service of PTS regarding different aspects, including for example punctuality, safety, security, availability of services, etc. In this context, many works have been conducted to define performance criteria and to develop evaluation standards and procedures, including for example the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual (TCQSM) used in the USA [1], [2], [3] or the European (UNI EN 13816) standard for quality of service in public transportation. However, there is still a need to develop decision support systems that: • Encompass the increasing number of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) • Take advantage of the diversity of the suggested performance evaluation methods • Capture, structure and use knowledge related to public transport systems • Able to interact with other information, communication and control technologies, intelligent infrastructure and software tools available to manage PTS In this paper, we suggest an ontology based evaluation support system that enables the evaluation of the performance of PTS with respect to several aspects, including availability, punctuality, human resources and security. Therefore, the remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II presents a brief literature review on performance criteria suggested for PTS. Section III introduces the use of ontology in transportation. Section IV presents our ontology-based system architecture and finally, the section V presents the implementation of the systems and used technologies. II. KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEMS PTS represent a critical element of urban cities as they contribute to solve problems of congestion and mobility within cities. The reliability of PTS is subject to deterioration due to a wide range of factors [4]. Service reliability is defined as the ability of a transit system to adhere to a schedule or maintain regular headways and a consistent travel time [5]. Causes of unreliability were widely studied and identified in the literature. For example, Cham [6] considers the following four main causes of unreliability: 1. Inefficient timetables that vehicles are unable to follow This work was supported by NSTIP strategic program number (12- INF2820-02) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The authors would like to thank all personnel involved in this work 2015 4th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Logistics and Transport (ICALT) 205 978-1-4799-8400-8/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE