Mending Our Streets with Big Data

            While researching articles for the usage of big data in vehicles I stumbled across a very interesting article by the Wall Street Journal. This article was about utilizing big data to help control traffic in Woodbridge, N.J. and Boston MA. They utilize some very ingenious methods to gather data and then interpret that data into something meaningful, resulting in a substantial savings for the local municipalities.

                 In the article they discuss Woodbridge first. The way they have utilized big data was to hire a fresh new upstart company to try and solve their traffic problems on the 6800 miles of roadways in the state. This company is Inrix Inc. a startup company based in Washington state. Their idea was to gather data from cell phone signals and GPS signals to determine the speed of traffic, weather, and events. They used this data to populate a map of the roadways in New Jersey and see the traffic flow in nearly real time. The heart of this system is housed in Woodbridge and is monitored on a 22ft tall screen. They describe an event that shows the potential this new system has. They say they saw one of the major thoroughfares go red, indicating stopped traffic. They quickly realized this was due to an accident and they sent crews out to resolve the problem. The road was only disturbed for 30 minutes versus the hours it would have taken before.

            In Boston they have been battling potholes. The detection of these potholes takes a huge amount of time and cost in excess of $200000 a year. Their idea was to create an app that could register where potholes where and relate that information back to the department of transportation. This app utilizes the accelerometer built into smart phones to determine when the vehicle hits a pothole then the location is stored. This app will replace an extremely outdated system of dragging chains over all the roads in Boston and measuring the vibrations. The app is reported to cost $80000 which will replace a the outdated procedure which costs $200000.

            In my opinion these are two ingenious examples of ways to solve very complex problems. Using big data analytics can allow for even more progress in our nation’s infrastructure in the future I believe. The local municipalities should continue to allow for contractors and government employees to think outside of the box to create more efficient and cost effect ways to fix complex infrastructure problems.

For the complete article please follow the link below.

Sources:

1.      http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303444204577460552615646874.html