Trip quality in an ad-hoc shared-ride system

In an ad-hoc shared-ride system, transportation clients and hosts negotiate for shared rides in a continuously changing environment, using wireless geosensor networks (Winter and Nittel 2006). Due to the peculiarity of this system—a local peer-to-peer communication strategy, and a complex and non-deterministic transportation network—clients will always have limited transportation knowledge, both from a spatial and a temporal perspective. Clients hear only from near hosts, and they do not know the future availability of current or new hosts. Hence, a client can plan an optimal trip prior to departure according to his current knowledge, but it is unlikely that this trip will be finally the optimal trip due to the continuously changing traffic condition. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the quality of trips generated in this dynamic environment in order to assess different communication and wayfinding strategies.