Client: Genoa Municipality

The application comes from the need to introduce inside Genoa Municipality the car-sharing service, a facility for resident citizens which have the capability to loan and get a car to move inside the urban area, but also outside, paying a reasonable price and using Municipal parkings and other interesting facilities.

The real objective of the Municipality was to fix an attractive hourly rate (and relevant enrolment price) to promote such a service without damaging the other transportation modes.

The car-sharing is one of many transportation modes used to move inside the urban area (together with train, bus, metro, taxi, etc.). The project consisted in the design and carrying out of a tool with the aim to simulate - using a transportation graph - paths and relevant times and costs, varying the mean of transport employed by the citizen.

Software is built in 2 modules named Graph Definition and Analyzer, respectively: the former allows to build the graph, the latter manages and analyzes the simulations, producing reports and elaborations.

The graph definition module supports the user in graph sketching operations and relevant definitions as travelling mode, constraints, etc. For each node the user is able to define inactive time, that is the time needed to change the mode in the node itself. 

Once created the graph, the user can switch to the Analyzer, introducing:

• manual setting: path limits and travelling modes by hand;
• automatic setting: path limits only. The tool calculates the path (and relevant modes arc by arc)  selecting the best (in terms of cost, time or distance);
• mixed: the user is able to manage sub-path (included in the main one as calculated), introducing modifications.

After the elaboration, the user can generate :

• reports, viewing, arc by arc, times, transportation modes, distances, etc. 
• indexes;
• graphs: cost versus distance or distance versus time.