Trust-Based Cooperative Social System Applied to a Carpooling Platform for Smartphones

Area of Science:

• Urban planning and transportation systems
• Computer science and mobile application development
• Social network analysis and trust modeling

Background:

• Urban traffic congestion is a significant global problem, largely due to single-occupancy private vehicles.
• Carpooling offers a potential solution to optimize vehicle occupancy but faces challenges in user trust and reliability.
• Mobile technology and social networks present opportunities to develop more secure and trustworthy carpooling platforms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and implement a novel carpooling system focused on enhancing user trust and system security.
• To improve upon existing carpooling solutions by integrating a robust reputation algorithm.
• To ensure user privacy within the carpooling platform.

Main Methods:

• Development of a mobile application for the Android platform.
• Implementation of a new reputation algorithm to measure user trust levels.
• Integration of privacy-preserving features to safeguard user data.

Main Results:

• The proposed system successfully integrates a trust-based mechanism through a novel reputation algorithm.
• User privacy is guaranteed, and trust levels are quantitatively measured.
• The system is developed as a user-friendly mobile application.

Conclusions:

• The developed carpooling system offers a secure and reliable solution to promote ride-sharing.
• The novel reputation algorithm effectively builds trust among users, encouraging wider adoption.
• This mobile application addresses key barriers to carpooling, contributing to reduced urban traffic congestion.