CHAPTER ONE

                            INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGROUND OF STUDY

A plate number is one of government’s established means of identification of vehicles in Nigeria and other parts of the world (Finelib, 2016). Number plates are used for identification of vehicles all over the nations. Vehicles are identifying either manually or automatically. Automatic vehicle identification is an image processing technique of identify vehicles by their number plates (Bhat & Mehandia, 2014). Motor vehicle national plate numbering which involves registration of vehicles as part of its process is the allocation of identification marks to a vehicle by serially numbering the vehicle. It is highly necessary to attach unique numbering to vehicle so as to maintain orderliness on roads and also for identification purposes. According to Finelib.com, 2016 Nigeria presently adopted a brand of plate number which to a great extent has ameliorated fraudulent practices perpetuated by some corrupt vehicle licensing officers; thereby enhancing the internally generated revenue of the federal government.

License plates are used for identification of vehicles all over the nation hence; it is illegal for two vehicles to have the same license number. Automatic vehicle identification systems are used for the purpose of effective traffic control and security applications such as access control to restricted areas and tracking of wanted vehicles (Bhat & Mehandia, 2014)

Although motor vehicle national plate numbering has been in existence for a while now, the old system of numbering which was in use earlier did not play a significant role in highway safety until the development of the new system of plate numbering where a reflective sheeting which is more visible to read even in the dark and special alphabetic codes are allocated to each vehicle which distinguishes the vehicle from any other vehicle throughout the whole federation, thereby creating some measures of uniqueness in such vehicle. This new system of national plate numbering came into effect on 16th January 1993 and was handled by Federal Road Safety Commission. This system was introduced to enforce a strict compliance to traffic rules and regulations as well as providing a proper data of road users (FRSC, 2016). Hence, the national plate numbering was designed to aid the identification of motor vehicles to their respective rightful owners

Motor vehicle national plate numbering is done by two government offices namely

i)                   Local government motor licensing offices for personal vehicles

ii)                 Cabinet office or any military established offices.

For personal vehicles, the suffix codes administered to vehicle plates help in identifying the local government where such vehicle was registered. For every code attached to a particular vehicle, it cannot tally with that of any other local government throughout the federation up until the registration of about two million vehicles before the code can be exhausted (Rabin; 2000). In some countries, the code is unique within the entire country, while in others it is unique within a state or local government. It also varies by issuing agency whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person also varies by issuing agency. (Wikipedia, 2017). Nigeria presently adopted a brand of plate number which to a great extent has ameliorated fraudulent practices perpetuated by some corrupt vehicle licensing officers; thereby enhancing the internally generated revenue of the federal government.

A randomized algorithm is an algorithm that employs a degree of randomness as part of its logic. The algorithm typically uses uniformly random bits as an auxiliary input to guide its behavior, in the hope of achieving good performance in the "average case" over all possible choices of random bits. As the ability to gather larger amounts of data increases, the need to devise algorithms to efficiently solve such problems becomes more important (Farbod; 2015). Formally, the algorithm performance will be a random variable determined by the random bits; thus either the running time, or the output (or both) are random variables. One has to distinguish between algorithms that uses the random input to reduce the expected running time or memory usage, but always terminate with a correct result (Las Vegas algorithms) in a bounded amount of time, and probabilistic algorithms, which, depending on the random input, have a chance of producing an incorrect result (Monte Carlo algorithms (Kroese et al., 2014)) or fail to produce a result either by signaling a failure or failing to terminate. In the second case, random performance and random output, the term "algorithm" for a procedure is somewhat questionable. In the case of random output, it is no longer formally effective. (Anigbogu, 2000).

However, in some cases, probabilistic algorithms are the only practical means of solving a problem (Alamo et al., 2015). The first advantage is performance; randomized algorithms run faster than the best-known deterministic algorithms for many problems. The second advantage is that many randomized algorithms are simpler to describe and implement than deterministic algorithms of comparable performance. There are general principles that lie at the heart of almost all randomized algorithms, despite the multitude of areas in which they find application.

A randomized algorithm can be viewed as a probability distribution on a set of deterministic algorithms. While the adversary may be able to construct an input that foils one (or a small fraction) of the deterministic algorithms in a set it is difficult to devise a single input that is likely to defeat a randomly chosen algorithm (Shimon, 1989). In this project work randomized algorithm will be implemented in the generation of vehicle plate number. This is to ensure efficiency in the number generation.

1.2       PROBLEM STATEMENT

The ever increasing number of vehicle owners has become a thing of worry to the Federal Road Safety Commission. Hence, an alternative has to be looked into to cover up the drawbacks experienced in the existing system. These drawbacks include:

i)                   Difficulty in tracing a vehicle owner’s record/information due to carelessness or the large volume of record being kept.

ii)                 Illegal registration of vehicles by unauthorized officers

iii)               Vehicle owners are sometimes surcharged due to over or under assessment of vehicles. The motive behind this could be fraud or mistake on the part of the officer.

iv)               Licensing officers often registering vehicles that do not belong to that particular state.

1.3       AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this project is to develop car plate numbering generating software for Federal Road Safety Office in charge of vehicle plate number generation using randomized algorithm. This is to be achieved by the following objectives:

i)                   To develop an algorithm for the generation and assignment of an infinite identification number (that is, the vehicle plate number)

ii)                 To implement the algorithm in (i) using PHP MySQL

iii)               To carry out performance evaluation of the system in (ii) 

1.4       SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

Due to technological advancement, the use of computer to process voluminous data within a short period of time at an incredible speed has helped improve the efficiency, effectiveness and compliance in the issuance of vehicle plate number, license and other related activities. The automatic generation of vehicle plate number provides an easy method for generating and assigning plate numbers or identification mark to vehicles as well as providing an easier and faster way to access vehicle owners’ registration information in the case of missing vehicles, breaking of traffic rules etc.

Provision of an automated plate number generating system will help the federal vehicle licensing office to ease their task of generating plate numbers for vehicle owners. This will increase the efficiency of principal licensing officers in the processing of vehicle registration document which will provide an easy storage and retrieval of vehicle and owners registration information at any time in the future.

Using an automated plate number generating system will create a highly accurate method of generating and assigning plate numbers and mode of interpreting them. It will also assist security agencies in finding missing vehicles.

1.5       SCOPE AND LIMITATION

Automated vehicle plate numbering involves the automatic generation of unique numbering for each vehicle being registered. The scope of this study covers the Federal Vehicle Licensing Offices of the Federal Road Safety Commission and is limited to vehicles registered in Nigeria

1.6       ORGANIZATION OF STUDY

For this research, chapter one entails a general introduction about what this research is all about. Chapter two entails literature review of related works to the research. Chapter three entails the methodology used in developing the system. Chapter four entails result and discussion of the result gotten. Chapter five entails summary and conclusion of the research.

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