Using mobility data to improve municipal traffic flow

"Many municipalities can reason in retrospect why traffic flow stalled, where there were too few parking spaces and what went wrong when buses were used during a train breakdown. They draw lessons from that for next time. But it is of course much better if you can see in real time that a bottleneck is developing somewhere so that you can make adjustments immediately," says Martijn van Aartrijk, senior business consultant at InTraffic. His role is to show parties what they can do with the data they already have and collect every day. "You can often get a lot more insights out of it than you think. Moreover, a new insight often provokes a follow-up question. For the municipality of Utrecht, for example, we therefore set up a customized solution: the Mobility Data System, MDS for short. The unique thing about the cooperation with the municipality of Utrecht is that they did not ask for a ready-made product, such as a dashboard, for example, but that the municipality was looking for partners to help them develop a smart mobility environment in the long term."

Predictive analytics

This is not easy; there are many technical hurdles to overcome. But eventually, through real-time analytics, you get to a point where you can start predicting: predictive analytics. "That's the holy grail," says Martijn. "Municipalities naturally want to know: what is the impact of a road closure on traffic flow and what is the best detour route? Do we need to widen the access road or make other interventions if there is a new residential development at a certain location?"

"You can often extract many more insights from mobility data than you think. Moreover, a new insight often provokes a follow-up question."

- Martijn van Aartrijk, senior business consultant at InTraffic

Inspiration sessions

To show organizations what is possible, InTraffic likes to engage with them. "We immerse ourselves in the client's environment and show how they can gain new insights from data when it comes to their mobility issues. With that, we try to inspire people. We like to trigger a new way of thinking: 'if we can find out this from our mobility data, can we also answer this and this question?' That's why we regularly organize inspiration sessions with our clients. Then it really comes alive in an organization," Martijn knows.

Real-time data analytics

InTraffic has developed a generic platform for mobility data in the cloud, including tooling to analyze, interpret and monitor this data, including from Internet of Things (IoT), in real time. The platform enables real-time processing and storage of up to 2 billion messages per day. Martijn: "We are specialists in unlocking, bringing together and analyzing data in such a way that we gain new insights from it. We also work with partners who have the knowledge and experience to get gigantic amounts of IoT data from A to B. Together with them, we determine which type of network you can best use for which purposes and what you need to think about when sending large amounts of data at once or, on the contrary, streaming data (very small pieces of data that are, however, sent continuously and need to be processed in real time)."

"Municipalities increasingly need decision support in advance and even faster analysis afterwards so that they can test their policies earlier and make adjustments where necessary."

- Martijn van Aartrijk, senior business consultant at InTraffic

Multidisciplinary approach

Martijn sees the development that has been set in motion continuing at full speed. "Data and algorithms are becoming an integral part of business operations. There is an increasing need for decision support in advance and for even faster analysis afterwards, so that municipalities can test their policies earlier and make adjustments where necessary." This will always be an interplay between different disciplines: traffic and OV specialists at a municipality or other customer who are struggling with some concrete issues; business consultants who can translate these customer needs into the necessary data and technology; techies like those who know what is involved in bringing together data in different dialects and from different sources in a consistent way on one platform; and data scientists like Chung Kit who can create visualizations and models that support real-time decisions.

Martijn: "In this interplay, InTraffic makes sure that we take the technical complexity away from our clients so that they can focus on the questions they want to answer using data. We take care of the technology and, with our domain knowledge, we bridge the gap between the different disciplines you need to answer mobility questions."