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Virginia Tech

Metrohelper: A Real-time Web-based System for Metro Incident Detection Using Social Media

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

In recent years the usage of public transit services has been rapidly increased, thanks to huge progress on network technologies. However, the disruptions in modern public transit services also increased, due to aging infrastructure, non-comprehensive system design and the needs for maintenance. Any disruptions happened in current transit networks can cause to major disasters on passengers who use these networks for their daily commutes. Although we have lots of usage on transit network, still most current disruptions detection systems either lack of network coverage or did not have real-time system. The goal of this thesis was to create a system that can leverage Twitter data to help in detecting service disruptions in their early stage. This work involves a web applications which contains front-end, back-end and database, along with data mining techniques that obtain Tweets from a live Twitter stream related to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) metro system. The fundamental features of the system includes real-time incidents panel, historical events review, activities search near specific metro station and recent news review, which allowing people to have more relatively information based on their needs. After the initial functionalities is being settled, we further developed storytelling and sentiment analysis applications, which allowed people have more comprehensive information about the incidents that are happened around metro stations. Also, with the emergency report we developed, the developer can have immediate notification when an urgent event occurred. After fully testified the system's case study on storytelling, sentiment analysis and emergency report, the outcomes are extreme convincing and trustworthy.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Science and Applications
Department dc:contributor.department
Computer Science
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2022

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Chen, Chih Fang
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Lu, Chang Tien
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Reddy, Chandan K.
  • Cho, Jin-Hee

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:35185
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110349

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Chen, Chih Fang. Metrohelper: A Real-time Web-based System for Metro Incident Detection Using Social Media. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/110349