160 VIEWPOINT While congestion in cities can manifest in different ways – whether that’s gridlock at rush hour, bottlenecks resulting from accidents or construction work, or inefficiencies caused by outdated traffic management systems – its disruptive impact remains constant. Yet urban areas continue to grow. Already, just over half (55 per cent) of the world’s population lives in urban areas, according to a new report from the United Nations, and that’s expected to increase to 68 per cent by 2050. For city planners, this presents a significant challenge when it comes to managing congestion and optimising traffic flow. Strategies informed by traditional road sensors are no longer sufficient. Effective traffic management requires real-time traffic data to ensure a fast and accurate response. But data without context means nothing. At TomTom, we bring data to life through maps, transforming billions of data points that come from monitoring almost 100 million kilometres of roads around the world into actionable intelligence. For more than 25 years, my work has focused on harnessing real-time traffic data and high-precision mapping to transform how cities move. My team and I develop tools that enable businesses and governments to not only understand traffic, congestion and travel times, but use this wealth of data to address deep complexities around mobility and create better, more liveable cities. For example, we can help a city wanting to reduce accidents to correlate historic speeds to accident data by plotting this on a map to highlight areas of concern. Or we can help a road agency managing traffic to pinpoint exactly where congestion is happening in real time to implement policy, deploy operational staff or adapt signal timings. Our suite of traffic analytics products includes TomTom Traffic Stats, a road network analysis tool that enables city planners to understand why a particular road got congested or how a new road “ As cities continue to become smarter and more connected, the role of data is only becoming more important” RALF-PETER SCHÄFER: TOMTOM As urban areas continue to grow, city planners need real-time traffic data to minimise congestion and enable smarter, more sustainable mobility solutions. TomTom is working hard to facilitate this Building smarter cities with traffic data
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=