• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.49-63
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• 2019

Crowdedness management at subway platforms is essential to improve services, including the prevention of train delays and ensuring passenger safety. Establishing effective crowdedness mitigation measures for platforms requires accurate estimation of the congestion level. There are temporal and spatial constraints since crowdedness on subway platforms is assessed at certain locations every 1-2 years by hand counting. However, smart cards generate real-time big data 24 hours a day and could be used in estimating congestion. This study proposes a model based on data from transit cards to estimate crowdedness dynamically. Crowdedness was defined as demand, which can be translated into passengers dynamically moving along a subway network. The trajectory of an individual passenger can be identified through this model. Passenger flow that concentrates or disperses at a platform is also calculated every minute. Lastly, the platform congestion level is estimated based on effective waiting areas for each platform structure.