Biking Dublin

Contributors:
Brendan Dwyer,
Michael McNulty,
Romain Ducarrouge

This program was designed to collect dynamic data from the JCDecaux API about Dublin City Bikes usage on a daily basis. The data collection was processed on an Amazon Web Service instance, EC2, and the data was saved to a SQLite database.
This is used to predict which time and which bike stations are likely to have available bikes when a user is trying to rent or return the bicycle.

CONTENTS OF THIS FILE

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Recommended modules
• Installation
• Configuration
• Troubleshooting
• FAQ
• License

INTRODUCTION

The 'Biking Dublin' application is intended for users to get real time information regarding bikes availability for hiring and returning at various bike stations throughout Dublin city. The application also offers historical data regarding the daily and hourly availability of bikes based on stations.

• For a full description of the module, visit the project page: https://github.com/DucarrougeR/DublinBikes

• To submit bug reports and feature suggestions, or to track changes: https://github.com/DucarrougeR/DublinBikes

REQUIREMENTS

This module requires the following modules:

• Python 3.X https://www.python.org/downloads/
• Pandas library for Python https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pandas/
• Flask framework version 0.10.1 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Flask
• SQLite to connect the web application to the database https://www.sqlite.org/download.html

RECOMMENDED MODULES

• Python 3.5.0 https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-350/
• Pandas 0.18 library for Python https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pandas/0.18.0/#downloads

INSTALLATION

• Once all the required modules are installed on the computer, you may launch the html file which will integrate with the SQL database using the Flask framework to fetch the data based on user input.

• You may want to change the source code on the webpage (html, javascript files) if you would prefer to run visualization using the pandas library to generate static graphs. Otherwise, keep the Google Charts script as the default setup to allow for interactive graphs to be displayed.

CONFIGURATION

• The website application is designed to function without the need for configuration.

• Select the stations in the drop down menu for information about a specific station. Additional information can be requested by selecting a particular day in order to access the availability for the bike station on an hourly basis.

• The graph displayed is interactive and displays the number of bikes when the mouse hovers above the graph to offer more complete information.

TROUBLESHOOTING

• If the application does not display, check the following:

  • the HTML file is in the same folder as the CSS file and the Python File and SQLITE databases

  • is your browser older than:
    Internet Explorer 7?
    Firefox 43?
    Safari 9.1?
    Chrome 48?

FAQ

Q: Why are there three colors for the circles on the map?

A: Each circle represents a unique bike station. The color of that circle represents its current bike availability status.
-Red Color: the station has less than 25% of the bikes available for hire.
-Orange Color: the station has between 25% and 75% of bikes available for hire.
-Green Color: the station has over 75% of the bikes available for hire.

Q: What is the difference between the two graphs on the page?

A: The first graph (on the left side of the page) indicates the average occupancy of the station on a daily basis for a week. The second graph (on the right side of the page) reflects the average occupancy on an hourly basis for the specific day chosen.

LICENSE

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.