Traffic routing in the ever-changing city of Doha

Qutar has undertaken ambitious investment plan of $200B on various infrastructural projects including a new three-line metro network, six new stadiums, several new satellite cities, and an 4,300km of new roads, which tripled the size of the road network in only five years. These projects have created significant traffic problems in Doha, including frequent traffic congestion and routing. The issue of inaccurate local maps has triggered an early work at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) in collaboration with Qatar Mobility Innovation Center (QMIC) to prepare an accurate map for the city of Doha, Qatar. The idea has been to use data collected from a fleet of vehicles that are continu ously tracked, for accurate and timely detection of road changes, such as new roads, road closures, and detours. To address the routing problem in the ever-changing roads of Doha, QCRI and QMIC have partnered with the national taxi company Karwa. The collaboration gives us access to all taxi data in the country, including pick-up and drop-off locations, time, duration, speed, fare, route, as well as sampled GPS points for each trip.