System Design
Advanced

Design Ride-Hailing Dispatch

Match riders and drivers using geospatial indexing, real-time location, pricing, and marketplace balancing.

45 min
3 sections
geospatial
dispatch
marketplace
1
2
3

01. Represent location as a streaming problem

Section 1 of 3

Driver locations update frequently and become stale quickly. Store current location in a fast geospatial index, persist sampled history separately, and avoid treating every update as a durable business event.

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Dispatch data:
- Current driver location: in-memory or fast key-value geospatial index.
- Trip state: durable transactional database.
- Location history: append-only event store with retention.
- Pricing features: demand, supply, weather, region, time of day.
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