Spatiotemporal Critical Opportunity and Link Identification for Joint Participation Scheduling - Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience - page 111

Fig. 7.2 Critical links in a dynamic transportation network

The critical index is used to identify the most popular links for taxi drivers in
a dynamic transportation network. This index is one of the objectives used in the
optimization approach for scheduling joint participation described in the following
section.
The common approach to identify available activity opportunities is illustrated in
Fig. 7.3 . For example, Fig. 7.3 a represents the two dynamic network-based space-
time prisms of two persons (A and B). Figure 7.3 b illustrates their joint participation
space within the prisms. The activity opportunities within this joint participation
space in Fig. 7.3 c represent available opportunities for the two persons to participate.
Once an available activity opportunity has been chosen as a joint activity, their
corresponding travel paths can be found within this prism (Fig. 7.3 d).However,this
common approach does not reflect the influence of critical links on the selection of
activity opportunities.
Based on the selection of a common approach, several available opportunities
can be found. This chapter presents a utility index which can evaluate the use of
critical links while choosing an available opportunity in the prism. This utility index
for an opportunity is defined as: