(1) Problem: The freedom of mobility
Our current transportation system won’t be able to deal with population growth. Today there is approximately 7 billion people in the world within our live time the number will growth to approximately 9 billion, this growth comes with a series of practical problems one of witch is mobility.
When we look at the population growth in terms of cars the problem becomes clearer. Today there are approximately 800M worldwide with more people and greater prosperity the number is going to growth to 2-4 billion of which at least 75% of those cars will be located in highly populated cities.
Today the average American spends about a week a year in traffic jams; with the rate of cars growth the impact will be even higher. There is a huge need to think about a long-term strategy to solve the mobility problem. Cities need to make mobility smarter: more efficient reliable and green.
(2) Technology: Intelligent Transport Systems
We know that the problem of mobility cannot be solved with a single solution and different aspects must be considered such as public transportation, infrastructure and parking. In order to address those issues we need information, thus data analytics is playing a crucial role in developing an Intelligent Transport System. there are three cities that are using big data to solve different mobility problems.
- Boston: the city is combining data open sources (such as Waze and Uber) and street cameras to easy congestion. This data is sincronized with traffic lights and public transportation systems to reduce traffic in the city. Se more at: http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/boston-is-using-big-data-to-solve-traffic-jams/
- California Smart parking: the city is testing a pilot called on-street parking system that involves the use of real time data collection to help people pay for parking and predict precisely where they will find a spot. The system analyzes historical data, laws and regulations, time remaining on parking meters to bring information regarding free spots, in California this system has reduced 10% of the traffic jams related to parking. See more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/03/a-big-data-app-that-helps-you-find-a-parking-spot/ and http://www.dot.ca.gov/newtech/modal/smart_parking.htm
- Sao Paolo: Since 2014 IBM and The Agência de Transporte do Estado de São Paulo started the Information Control Center designed to help ensure the quality of service provided by local operators of the state’s highways. The center will unify traffic data, incident management and service delivery through the use of advanced analytics to help ensure safer and more efficient travel for a population of 20 million. See more at: https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/44745.wss
(3) Stakeholders
City mayors.
Private companies.
Citizens (users)
(4) Implementation
To start a pilot the first step is to sign agreements with private technological enterprises such as IBM, the second step is to collect data from different sources. A marketing campaign must be part of the strategy in order to inform users about the solution and how to use it.
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