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Waze will deliver real-time data to improve safety on U.S. roads

Posted: 16 July 2018 | | No comments yet

A new programme is to facilitate Waze’s live alerts on traffic and infrastructure to help cities make better infrastructure decisions, whilst improving safety on the roads…

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Waze has initiated the Connected Citizens Program: a two-way sharing database of publicly available traffic and road condition information, which offers governments a stream of data constantly updated in real-time.

The crowdsourced traffic data will be free for members of the programme and enable American cities to make more accurate and effective infrastructure decisions; improving the efficiency of incident responses.

“The Waze Connected Citizens Program is all about removing any barriers to innovation,” said Adam Fried, Waze Global Partnerships Manager. “We want to help our partners leverage existing infrastructure and be able to make better data-driven decisions. Now, a city will be able to easily access and analyse Waze data within Esri ArcGIS and use those insights to improve roadway management.”

Authorities within cities will be able to see real-time accidents and traffic issues and take the data into consideration when making decisions about road infrastructure. This has the potential to help officials make changes to roads more quickly rather than waiting to receive feedback from residents. Municipal personnel, like traffic engineers, will be able to analyse where the biggest problems exist on the roads and create targeted solutions. For instance, by seeing exactly where the most crashes are occurring, engineers will know where they need to place more officers, replace street signs or adjust the timing of traffic lights.

“Municipalities will be able to leverage near up-to-the-minute reports without having to write code or purchase additional software,” said Andrew Stauffer, Manager of Civic Technology at Esri. “Mapped Waze data will be available immediately in all ArcGIS apps, where traffic engineers and city planners can use it to maintain and build safer, more efficient transportation systems.”

Much of the information government organisations rely on to make decisions is becoming obsolete as communities are starting to use technology like sensors and drones to monitor the quality of roads, bridges and utilities. Waze’s new programme will give municipalities back the opportunity to harness driver data.