The Creation Of The Oyster E System Information Technology Essay

The Creation Of The pull together E System Information Technology EssayIntroductionTfL is the body responsible for the majority of capital of the United Kingdoms transport systems. It manages London B usages, the Underground, the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) and Croydon Tramlink, Londons road network and traffic lights, traffic management and the congestion charging scheme. It runs London River run and regulates taxis and the private hire trade. However, National rail services be not TfLs direct responsibility neglect al just about services in London (Mezghani, 2008).This paper aims to analyse TfLs garner ticketing system and render a balanced esteemment of its deployment, functionality and efficiency. Further, it would aim to propose recommendations pertaining to improving operability or scalability as the case may be. pull together e- raging SystemTfL was created in 2000 and is the integrated body responsible Londons transport system (TfL, 2010). huitre was launched in 2003 w ith to a greater extent than seven one thousand million Oyster broadsheets operating in London since. Each week, fifty-seven million journeys atomic number 18 made using Oyster and more than 80 per cent of all told auto wad and render payments are now by Oyster learning ability. TfL processes 10 million Oyster transactions a sidereal day whilst Barclaycard MasterCard processes 40 million transactions a day- half of the worlds credit card transactions (oyster-factsheet, 2010). This further elucidates the volume and importance of the Oysters operations.The Oyster card is a contactless transport intellectualcard which tramp store period tickets as head as Pre- suffer value which can be used to pay for individual fares. It encourages public transport use by reducing barriers to access, improving bus journey times and free staff from the ticket site as well as providing an integrated ticketing platform (Inglesant and Sasse, 2005).The aim of the Oyster (as of any other e-Tick eting system) is to incite over an open payment scheme which promotes inter-modality, inter-operability, inter-services (e-purse), parking and road pricing, node relationship management (CRM), network monitor and planning, secured access and individual safety (Mezghani, 2008).TfL Fare systemThere are a variety of tickets for two single rides and for periods of time over various modes of pane. A capping system guarantees that an Oyster card user ending be charged no more than the cheapest combinations of single tickets, travelcards and/or bus pass that cover all journeys made that day. The cap is based on modal choice, maximum zonal journey made on the Tube and time of day. A 50p discount is given where the price is capped at the travelcard or bus pass rate. Unlike paper daily travelcards, Oyster cards capped at travelcard rates are not valid on National Rail services other than those routes which accept Oyster Pay as you go. Concessionary fares exist for children, students, e lderly and physically impaired people, as well as adults on some types of benefits (Mezghani, 2008).E-ticketingWhen discussing e-Ticketing systems, there are a few things which should be considered mandatory. These areThe fare levels and structureThe ticketing spectrumThe possibilities for desegregationThe smartcard applied scienceThe interoperability issueThe business caseThe business modelThe clearing mechanismsThe exploitation of informationHowever, due to the limitations of the scope of this paper only some factors will be discussed with relevance to the oyster ticketing system.TechnologyThe Oyster card is a contactless smartcard, with a claimed proximity range of about 8cm (3inches). The card operates as a RFIDsystem and is compatible with ISO 14443A standards although the Oyster readers can also read other types of cards including ISO14443B and Cubic Go- separate. From its introduction until January 2010, Oyster cards were based on NXP/PhilipsPhilipsKoninklijke Philips El ectronics N.V. , most commonly known as Philips, is a multi field of study Dutch electronics corporation.MiFare MIFAREMIFARE is the NXP Semiconductors -owned trademark of the re locateedly most widely installed contactless smart card, or proximity card, technology in the world with over 1 billion smart card chips and 10 million reader modules exchangestandard 1k chips provided by Giesecke Devrient Giesecke DevrientGiesecke Devrient is a German company headquartered in Munich that provides banknote and securities printing, smart cards, and cash handling systems., Gemaltoand SchlumbergerSema. Since December 2009 all new Oyster cards were produced using the MiFare DESFirechips. From February 2010 MiFare based Oyster cards were no longer issued to the public. DESFire cards are now widely used in transport smartcard systems (Absolute Astronomy, 2010).MiFare and DESFire chips, on which the Oyster card is based, are warehousing smartcards, meaning that they do not make water any co mputing advocator of their own. They are activated only when they are in an electromagnetic field compatible with ISO14443A. The Oyster readers provide this electromagnetic field. The readers read information from the cards, carry out computation to check whether to allow travel and to assess the payable fare and write back information to the card. Some basal information about the MiFare or DESFire chip can be read by any ISO14443A compatible reader but further, Oyster specific information cannot be read without access to the encryption used for the Oyster system. While it has been suggested that a good reader could read personal details from quite a distance there has been no evidence of anyone being able to decrypt Oyster information. By design the cards do not carry any personal information, such as names, addresses, etc. (Mezghani, 2008).As a smartcard system, the Oyster card uses a distributed settlement framework. All transactions are settled between the card and reader alon e. Readers behave the transactions to the back office in batches but there is no need for this to be make in real time. The Oyster back office system acts mainly as a demo of transactions that have been completed between cards and readers. This provides a high degree of resilience in the system (Absolute Astronomy, 2010).MemoryThe size of the dynamic memory on a smart card into which data can be written or changed is limited, at present, both by the cost of this kind of memory (EEPROM Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) and by the physical size of the memory chip in spite of appearance the cards processor. Many of the first generation read-write cards offer only a few nose candy bytes of EEPROM. However, commercial cards with 4, 8 and reliably up to 64K bytes are now available- albeit at a cost. Cards with 100K bytes are also emerging. 2-4K bytes of memory is sufficient to store the financial balance and contract information, plus an auditable scan of around 100 of the most recent transactions (containing information such as time, location, service, charge and final exam balance). However, the memory is really a function of what and how many applications the card is expected to support and this largely determines the unit cost of the card (Mezghani, 2008).SecurityThe security of public transport systems against fraud relies on many components- which the smartcard is well(p) one. Typically, to minimize costs, system integrators will chose a relatively cheap card and concentrate the security efforts in the back office (which also is the case with Oyster). Additional encryption on the card, transaction counters, and other methods acknowledge in cryptography are then required to make cloned cards useless, or at least(prenominal) to enable the back office detect fraud in case a card is compromised, and put it on a blacklist. Systems that work with online readers only (i.e., readers with a permanent link to the back office) are easier to nurture than systems that have offline readers as well, for which real-time checks are not possible and blacklists cannot be updated as frequently (Mezghani, 2008).Mezghani (2008) recalls a presentation by Henryk Pltz and Karsten Nohl at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress in December 2007 which depict a partial reverse-engineering of the algorithm used in the MiFare determinate chip, and potentially revealed some insecurities in the MiFare Classic security model, which resulted in people gaining access to transport facilities without charge.IntegrationIn the context of fare collection, it is consequential to distinguish between tariff integration and ticket integration. It is important to note that integrated (multi-mode, multi-operator) fare schemes are initiatives taken or at least endorsed by transport authorities to make travel by public transport easy. Fare integration is treated differently on single tickets compared to season tickets. individual tickets tend to be mod e-exclusive (e.g. surface transport vs. heavy rail) while season tickets are in most cases multi-modal. Besides, the more fare-setting is controlled by the authority, the higher fare integration beats. E-ticketing makes ticketing integration easier to implement because it can manage a more complex fare system without necessarily harmonising amongst fares of different operators or modes. Each operator or mode keeps its own single fares and the smartcard acts as a unique means of payment. In addition, the system can include rules for transfer rights in order to be more attractive. Fares integration is no longer a pre-requisite to achieving seamless travel- this is the case with TfLs Oyster, Hong Kongs Octopus and Seouls T-Money (Mezghani, 2008).Mari (2008) in an article for computing.co.uk posed the question Will poor integration derail smart tickets? With London 2012 in sight, its quite clear it would be very difficult for visitors to move about the country without a properly integr ated ticketing system. Yes, the Oyster is focused on London and transportation for London. However, it is an opportunity to generate extra income via commissions and TfLs position is important as it is a leader in the smart e-Ticketing field.InteroperabilityThe term interoperability can create confusion, since it can be defined in more than one way. calibration is an important concern in particular when it deals with interoperability. In this respect, several initiatives have been developed at national level in order to define practical standard specifications, e.g. ITSO standard in the UK and VDV Kernapplikations in Germany. They have jointly developed some basic concepts for European e-ticketing. A suite of three standards which serve as a generic framework has been published a standard for data elements (EN 1545), a standard for a framework for interoperable ticketing (EN 15320, also known as IOPTA Interoperable Public Transport Application), and a basic standard for the functi onal interoperable fare management system architecture (ISO 24014-1, also known as IFM SA) which was additionally jointly developed with US and Japanese experts. According to IFM system architecture, there are quaternion different levels of the interoperability concept (Mezghani, 2008). This is believed to be a new gestalt in the field of smartcard e-Ticketing and will eventually become the modus operandi for all e-Ticketing technologies. Below is an illustration of the interoperable architecture applied to the Helsinki e-Ticketing system.Source www.emta.com/IMG/pdf/EMTA-Ticketing.pdfStandardizationITSO started in 1998 and was incorporated in 2001. Its a company whose membership covers the width of the Transport arena including transport operators (both bus and train operating companies), suppliers to the industry, local authorities and public transport executives. Supported by the Department for Transport, ITSO link up with major transport industry organizations and established s martcard schemes in the UK and overseas.Having evolved from the initiative of various UK Passenger Transport governance who were concerned withthe lack of standards for interoperable smartcard ticketing,ITSOs objective is to maintain and develop the ITSO Specification tooperate and manage an interoperable smart media environment andto facilitate and support development of interoperable smart ticketing schemes that comply with the ITSO Specification (ITSO, 2010). TfL has been workings with the ITSO since 2006 and is currently expanding its interoperability through various products provided by the organization.ITSO supports the following Product TypesTYP0 Private ApplicationTYP2 Stored ValueTYP3, 17 LoyaltyTYP4, 5 Charge to AccountTYP14, 16 Entitlement and IDTYP22, 23, 24 Pre-defined TicketsTYP25 VoucherTYP26 TollingTYP27, 28, 29 Space-saving TicketsTYP34 Transient TicketThe diagrams below illustrate the structure of the ITSO system and its benefits.ITSO System Overview. Sourcewww.c tst.com/CTST08/pdf/Hochfield.pdfITSO stored value proposition Source http//www.itso.org.uk/page45/ round%20ITSO/Weinstein (2009) elucidates the options Oyster has in expanding its scope and maintaining efficiency by stating the need to look outward especially at other e-Ticketing systems around the world and learn from advancement in these systems or the transport schemes put in place. The EMV standard could be a path to inter-operability as it uses global networks that already exist and that work effectively every day for millions of purchases (Weinstein, 2009).ConclusionThere are several reasons transport authorities introduce or re-model e-Ticketing systems. However, they do not have the same priorities. With EMV gradually gaining ground, Oyster is constantly striving to ease customer experience as well as strengthen its competitive advantage. However, the main focal point for the Oyster should be scalability. This ensures seamless integration when new technology is introduced a nd platform independence as a result of interoperability. It also aids data mining which serves as input for future modelling and design. Scalability should, above anything, be the primary focus of Oyster as it forecasts.