A new partnership is using the Big Data taken from trillions of connected devices and incorporating the GPS and smartphone data points into one of the most widely used transportation modeling and simulation software platforms.
USA-based StreetLight Data Inc and Germany’s PTV Group have partnered to integrate StreetLight Data’s Travel Metrics with PTV’s transportation modeling and forecasting software. StreetLight’s Travel Metrics describe transportation behavior that is measured by trillions of GPS- and smartphone-derived data points, then contextualized with demographic and land-use information. The partners made the announcement at PTV Group’s annual North American User Group Conference. Conventionally, transportation behavior data is collected using costly, time-consuming methodologies that yield small sample sizes and incomplete information. Integrating this data into modeling tools for calibration is usually a labor-intensive process, regardless of the data collection methodology used. The combination of StreetLight’s Travel Metrics and PTV’s robust modeling platform can thus drive far more accurate, efficient models and forecasts.
For transportation engineers, modelers and planners, the integrated technologies’ core benefits are:
Immediate, seamless access to precise, accurate and comprehensive mobility data, while developing long-term and real-time transportation models using leading simulation software; Easy, direct incorporation of Metrics, such as origin-destination, demographics, trip purpose; Select link analyses into studies and project evaluations created using PTV’s modeling technology.
PTV customers in North America will be able to purchase StreetLight’s Travel Metrics for any location pre-integrated into the software. They will first be available in PTV’s Visum macroscopic traffic modeling software, however, the companies plan to gradually expand the integration throughout PTV’s Vision Traffic transportation software suite.
“Together, StreetLight Data and PTV Group are making truly data-driven transportation modeling, forecasting and project evaluation more efficient and cost-effective than ever before,” commented StreetLight’s CEO, Laura Schewel. “This partnership will enable our clients to maximize the time they spend improving reliability, sustainability and accessibility of transportation, and less time trudging through data collection and fiddling with data integration.”
Shaleen Srivastava, vice president of sales and marketing for traffic at PTV North America, said, “Our users are eager to use Big Data for transportation modeling, but the intensive processing required to make the information useful has posed considerable roadblocks. By partnering with StreetLight, we are eliminating those roadblocks by providing our software users with ready-to-use observed OD matrices within our platform, which will allow them to quickly build their Visum, Vissim and/or Vistro models, and open up a new frontier for the data-driven planning that our industry requires to adapt to a fast-changing mobility landscape.”
