Transport modelling company PTV Group is one of the partners of the new Horizon Europe research project EMERALDS on urban mobility data analytics.

A team of experts in data science and mobility from 10 European countries will develop a Mobility Analytics as a Service toolset over the next three years with the aim of improving data-driven decision making in cities. 

The company says that, today, large, complex, and fast-moving data systems are generated everywhere in the mobility sector: For example, by millions of citizens using location-based applications, sensors, that control traffic flows or increasingly connected vehicles. Although the smart use of this data is key to shaping the mobility of the future, much of it remains untapped. EMERALDS aims to exploit the potential of extreme urban mobility data by advancing state-of-the-art extreme data mining, aggregation and analytics technologies and integrating them with urban mobility and transportation domain expertise. The team of 16 consortium partners is working on a tailor-made, cloud-based toolset to improve data processing and analytics capabilities, enhance data security, and facilitate data sharing.

PTV Group’s role in the project is to develop an Extreme Scale Map Matching tool which uses vehicles GPS data to estimate trajectories and network speeds. In a second step, the tool will be integrated in PTV Flows, a new cloud-based software for monitoring and predicting traffic which will be launched in July. PTV Flows will then be used to build a showcase for the UK city of York.  

“Data is driving the transformation towards a more efficient, sustainable and safer mobility. It is the base for informed decision-making and thus for implementing the best measures”, said Christian U. Haas, CEO of PTV Group. “EMERALDS is making an important contribution to exploiting the potential of Extreme Data and transforming it into knowledge and insights. We are delighted to be involved in this groundbreaking project.”

The EMERALDS toolkit will supply transportation engineers, urban planners, urban data scientists and policy makers with many applications, such as traffic engineering and risk management. To demonstrate these applications and their possibilities, different use cases are being carried out in the pilot cities of The Hague, Utrecht and Riga.

(Picture – PTV)