In the first of a series of articles in which we talk to Intertraffic Amsterdam 2024 Summit Speakers, we begin with TomTom’s Jeroen Brouwer on the subject of Floating Car Data
Using real-time GPS data (otherwise known as Floating Car Data or FCD) to create traffic data and digital maps is common practice in 2024. However, in a world of changing demands for real-time maps and more contextual traffic information in order for an ADAS-enabled vehicle to safely drive from A to B, there is a need for new data sources and improved services.
On Wednesday 17 April at 10:00 in Intertraffic Summit Theatre 3 TomTom’s Director CRO Customer & Sales Analytics Jeroen Brouwer will discuss the latest innovations, data sources and new initiatives that bring Digital Maps and Traffic Data to the next level. He tells Intertraffic about what inspired the subject of his presentation and how his company are going about meeting the aforementioned needs.
Intertraffic: Firstly, what is new and exciting in the world of FCD? What gets you out of bed every morning to go and tackle a new solution, a new problem?
Jeroen Brouwer (JB): When you look at the demand from our customers, what they want is more map data and traffic data delivered faster. They want more context and more safety-related information and one of the shortcomings of floating car data is it provides you speed information, which is really good of course, but it doesn't tell you anything about what's happening contextually. This is what my summit presentation is about; that we're now using new sensor data to enrich that data further. More vehicles have a camera, either in the grille or behind the mirror and these cameras are seeing everything, such as road signs, dynamic speed limits, vehicles standing still on the hard shoulder and so on. Using that information we started to make our maps and our traffic data better.
Intertraffic: Can you give us an example of how those improvements are being made and how your customers are getting the benefits?
JB: One example is roadworks. We were previously depending on the government to report things like roadworks or that the M25 is closed, for example. The problem with that is this information is very fragmented and often not even available. What we now have with the camera data is the ability to see all the signs warning of the start of the roadworks. This means we have a fleet of vehicles driving around providing us with this information and we can really validate how good or bad the governmental data is.
Our users want more context and more safety-related information. FCD provides you with speed information, which is really good of course, but it doesn't tell you anything about what's happening contextually
Intertraffic: What does TomTom do with that data?
JB: We enrich it by filling in the gaps with all that observed information and make the data stream better and more reliable. And if you look at our user base, often car manufacturers are working more and more on technology around autonomous driving attributes. So, with self-driving technology, knowing about approaching roadworks and knowing that lanes may be narrow or closed is really important information for the vehicle to make a decision and to say ‘OK, hands on the steering wheel now because we're getting into a stretch where you need to pay attention.’ Just looking at speed and travel time doesn't give you that information.
This is why one of the key things that we will talk about on April 17 is the new sensor data. What I personally find really cool is that we can also do more with it in terms of dynamic speed limits. One of our challenges is that customers want a data stream for the whole of Europe, but only a few countries have part of this information virtually available. In Flanders and the Netherlands it's not complete and it doesn't cover the entirety of Europe. With the rich camera data we can see that a speed limit is now 50 km/h and based on that we can make a real-time stream with dynamic speed limits for the whole of Europe.
With self-driving technology, knowing about approaching roadworks and knowing that lanes may be narrow or closed is really important information for the vehicle to make a decision and to say ‘Hands on the steering wheel now’
Intertraffic: In terms of traffic data analytics and what is possible, what's the mythical pot of gold at the end of the traffic rainbow? How much more accurate can data actually be, taking privacy concerns (and GDPR) into consideration?
JB: To be perfectly honest I don't worry that much about privacy concerns, for the simple reason that at TomTom, we have a policy that we never expose any raw or anonymised GPS probe data with our customer. Anonymised doesn't mean you can't relate it back to an individual person, so company policy is we always aggregate data and the aggregated solution is what we provide to our end customers. As a user what you get is the flows of origin destination or the average speed split in percentiles, but you don't get to know how a specific person drove at that moment in time, because that's sensitive information. If you aggregate it, as a traffic engineer, you can still do all the relevant studies: where do people speed? Where do we have to change the infrastructure? What may be a hotspot for safety? I’d say that we have privacy covered.
We don't worry that much about privacy for the simple reason that at TomTom we have a policy that we never expose any raw GPS probe data because it's anonymized
Intertraffic: To end on a simple question that might not have a simple answer - what’s next?
JB: What's the what's the dream of the traffic eengineer? I guess it's using that huge volume of data. What traffic engineers want is an API so they can make their own queries on the database. We are not making a product for traffic engineers, saying: ‘here you go, have an average speed product and have fun with it’. We’re opening it up and giving them the option of analysing, for example, the first week of the year, or the last 10 days of the month. Sure, go ahead. Define your route or area, define what date range you're interested in, and then start querying. In countries like the UK, roughly one out of three vehicles reports data to TomTom. So the volume of data is huge, which is great, as that makes it reliable. But then there's the customization that the different engineering guys from Atkins and Rijskwaterstaat and National Highways need, they want to be able to query it based on their specific needs.
Join Next level traffic information services with new sensor data with Jeroen Brouwer in Intertraffic Summit Theatre 3 from 10:00 - 10:30 on Wednesday, 17 April.
