New INRIX platform to aid smart city planning

INRIX, a global provider of transport intelligence and connected car services, has introduced the first analytics platform to tap big data from the connected car for urban planning, retail site selection and advertising measurement.

Through analysis into the movement of people, vehicles and commerce in cities worldwide, INRIX Insights will provide business and government with the ability to gain insight from the connected car for use in planning new roads and transit systems, locating a business or measuring the results of a marketing campaign. The platform leverages real-time GPS data from a growing network of more than 250 million vehicles and devices.

“Unlike the traditional methods of people with clickers and paper surveys giving you just a snapshot of data, our new platform can provide year on year, month on month, and daily data comparisons,” Steve Banfield, INRIX Chief Marketing Officer, told Cities Today. “We process data so that today we can give you a report about what happened yesterday. With Insights Volume you can look at cars that are moving though certain points at various times, which is incredibly useful, both from a public planning standpoint, but also for advertising.”

The first two services on its INRIX Insights platform are INRIX Insights Trips and INRIX Insights Volume. INRIX Insights Trips is a data-as-a-service (DaaS) application for understanding population movement across a metropolitan area, between two locations and at various points along the way.

INRIX Insights Volume is a global population movement service that provides insight into how many vehicles typically pass a location by time of day, day of week at a location as well as actual vehicle counts on a specific day, time and side of the road. Together, these services represent a breakthrough in Origin-Destination and vehicle count analysis that reduces cost and complexity while increasing the accuracy of data and reliability of information.

“INRIX sits at the intersection of connected cars and smart cities,” Scott Sedlik, INRIX General Manager & Vice President EMEA, told Cities Today. “We are processing huge amounts of data daily about the mobility of people within a city and car companies such as, BMW, Audi, Toyota, and Volkswagen, are using our traffic, routing, and parking technologies in their connected vehicles. On the smart city side we are actually powering the UK Highways, the entire strategic network for the UK, and 46 of the 50 Departments of Transport in the US in terms of providing traffic information on their entire roadway networks.”