#ITSWC2022 - Transforming the Future of Transportation With Data - ITS World Congress Round-up

ITS World Congress, Los Angeles, brought transportation officials and technology providers together. The theme this year was 'Transformation by Transportation'.

Transport executives are looking for ways to understand the vast data coming from connected cars and smart transportation sensors to make safer, greener and smarter transportation. The exhibit hall was abuzz with demonstrations and displays of ways to map and analyse data.

ESRI's Data Velocity

Terry Bills, Transportation Industry Director at ESRI showed a map of live feeds from ArcGIS Velocity that runs in the cloud.

"It integrates a variety of live streaming data. It also shows crowd-sourced data that is filtered in the feed. There is weather data, live traffic and connected vehicle data, coming directly from the vehicles," said Bills.

"We have partners that are using the cameras for vehicle counts. These are the on-road cameras. They are counting vehicles using computer vision to identify all of the cars and calculate the average speed. So all that is coming in in real-time." 

Traffic information managers use ArcGIS live maps for traffic operation and traffic management. All the data goes into a database, and the technology is used to analyze and understand traffic patterns, improve traffic flow and incident responses, explained Bills.

Future Safer Roads from GM Data

Shawn Granda, Head of Product at GM Safer Roads, said about Safety View by GM Future Roads & INRIX: "We are offering software as a service to focus on where there are safety risks on the road. INRIX is bringing to the table things like vulnerable road user information, and GM brings in the connected vehicle information. We are trying to create a holistic view of what's going on the roadways to prioritize a vision for a safety action plan."

The service provides insights using crash, vehicle and vulnerable road user (VRU) information.

"The application includes census data, making sure it is more of an inclusive solution," said Granda.

GM Future Road has on its roadmap - detecting potholes, collecting weather data from wiper sensors and collecting vehicle sensor information - then providing it to DOT customers, hinted Granda.

Embracing Data for Safety

"The general industry trend is an embracing of data,’ said Ben Griffard, VP of Safety, Street Simplified. Street Simplified uses video and AI to create traffic and safety analytics.

"Historically, up until the last couple of years, if you wanted to make a safety assessment, you were pretty much purely looking at crash data only. Literally, somebody died before they assessed safety. You were looking at crash data only, and virtually nothing else," said Griffard.

He noted that the embracing of data and technology is illustrated in the "Safe Streets for All" grant funding opportunity that passed on September 15. The Federal Government expressly said that they are looking for the use and integration of data sets beyond traditional crash data.

Derq Gives Insight Into Dangerous Violations

Derq won the 2022 Global ITS Innovation Competition at the event.

Jamie Sullivan, Vice President of Business Development North America at Derq showed Auto Futures, on a giant monitor, a map of the main thoroughfare in Fremont, California, Fremont Avenue.

"It's finding things like near-misses with vehicles red light violation events, illegal crossings, illegal manoeuvres and dangerous vehicle activities - so the traffic controller can identify what's going on," said Sullivan.

Controllers use that data to analyze countermeasures to prevent those types of things, he said.

Derq's real-time perception AI platform aggregates data from traffic sensors, signal controllers, connected infrastructure, connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles for two applications, Derq Insight and Derq Sense. Insight generates real-time safety and traffic Insights. Sense provides real-time infrastructure-based analytics for traffic management and perception.

Iteris Makes Data Clearer With ClearMobility

Iteris makes data useful for public agencies, says Moe Zarean, Vice President and General Manager, Mobility Operations Services, Iteris.

"There is a lot of data and it is increasing. There is a variety of data and traffic patterns, tract data, safety data and incident data. We bring everything under one roof and merge data together to generate actionable insights," said Zarean.

"For example, we look at the driving behaviour in terms of speeding everywhere based on the data that we receive and identify safety hotspots. We tell the agencies that if you want to do any mitigation, these are the top priority areas," says Zarean.

Controllers need the intelligence to see where to focus. He says Iteris provides analytics and tools to enable them to make informed decisions. Iteris software is a cloud-based offering called Clear Guide, which is part of The ClearMobility platform.

How Flow Labs Helps Transportation Agencies

At the Flow Labs booth, Jatish Patel, Founder and CEO, gave a demonstration. Flow Labs provides an AI-powered end-to-end traffic management platform that analyzes, monitors, and optimizes traffic flow.

"Flow Lab's core mission is to make roadways cleaner, clearer and safer for everyone. We are all about impact, and how to help transportation agencies leverage all of the data that is available in the ecosystem to make better, more impactful decisions, make them faster, and make them cheaper as well," said Patel.

ITS World Congress is the debut of the public release of the company's latest platform with all the bells and whistles, he says.

There are four products in the core platform, Abacus for analytics, Cerberus, for proactive monitoring, Optimus for signal optimization, and Litmus for project performance measurement.

"The platform helps engineers get through the entire engineering process from start to finish, all in just a few clicks - streamlining the entire engineering workflow," said Patel.

Signal optimisation is a process that retimes a set of signals. It will take roughly about 50 to 70 hours per intersection, labour time, reported Patel. Then as if by magic, he showed a road requiring traffic signal timing - -with a few clicks of a mouse, the screen showed a traffic-timing plan.

"For example, an engineer can see that a plan has a 5% reduction in travel time is 5% reduction in vehicle emissions and fuel consumption. All they have to do is click on Approve. Then they can download the timing plan in whatever format they want. Then they can upload it into their signal systems immediately," said Patel.

"We are also showing all of the different dimensions of data that an engineering team may care about - not just operations - but mobility, safety, asset health, and environmental impact." 

"In terms of new products, we are going to be releasing about two products every year. Next on the list will be Transit Operations and Planning. We'll be offering Traffic Incident Management as well. The year after that, we'll be looking at urban planning tools," predicted Patel.

Wejo Shares Data, Road and Winter Insights

The UK's Wejo announced Road Health and Winter Road Insights powered by NIRA Dynamics. NIRA is a vehicle onboard analytics platform for sensor fusion and road surface monitoring. Road Health and Winter Road Insights aggregate data insights across roads to enable proactive road safety and informed decisions.

"Wejo is a data provider. We are really a partner in this ecosystem. We are helping them enable their products to their end market. So, whether it is reducing traffic congestion or implementing more convenient intersections - it's all around helping our communities mobilize easier and safer throughout their cities," said Casey Hyde, Wejo Events Manager.

What Is Intelligent Traffic Really All About?

Chris Myatt, Principal Solutions Engineer, Q-Free summed up data usage for transportation this way: "It's not just about the data but the ease of data."