Mining spatio-temporal association rules in bus IC card databases

The traditional association rules are improved and applied them in bus IC card (i.e. public transport IC card) databases. Some interesting spatio-temporal patterns are discovered, such as frequent aboard (alight) bus stops, frequent direct route and frequent transfer route patterns et al. With these concepts and effective pruning strategies, the hidden non-trivial patterns can be effectively extracted from the databases. These patterns can provide timely and accurate information for supporting scientific traffic management and control.