Abstract:
Vehicle location based services and tracking system available in Nairobi city mainly focus on private car owners, fleet
management for various organization and cargo tracking. In addition, public transport in Nairobi city is generally characterized by a lot
of chaos; these range from poor management of the vehicles, traffic congestion, reckless driving and unreliable service provision. The
main objective of the project discussed in this paper was to develop a customized location based service that caters for the needs of the
public transport sector in Nairobi city. The project demonstrates development of a prototype open source solution for management of
public transport in Nairobi. The solution uses GPS, web GIS and GPRS technologies for real time transmission of coordinates from the
tracking device to the central database server and finally rendering on the web page. The development process of the system entailed the
analysis of existing systems in the city, system design and development, evaluation and implementation. OpenGTS (Open GPS Tracking
System) platform for tracking was adopted and customized to the needs of public transport in Nairobi. The research provides a cheap
solution for effective management of public service vehicles by preventing vehicle misuse. The final solution comprises of a web based
application, android application and customized query interface. The web based application provides graphical visualization and the
customized queries while the android application used by the vehicle operator to update non spatial the database.
