Safer and more sustainable urban environment using anonymous data

"Through our collaboration with TomTom, we increase our understanding of how the car traffic moves, which roads residents and professional drivers prefer and where we lack road network capacity. This lays the ground for better decision-making processes when making recommendations to our customers, while simultaneously resulting in efficient planning of the infrastructure, reduced greenhouse gas emissions as well as safer and more pleasant urban environments", Erik Hedman, Head of Smart Mobility at Ramboll, says.

Travel surveys and speed cameras are among some of the traditional methods used for the production of data for traffic and urban planning, yet, they rarely provide a comprehensive picture. With digital GPS-positioned traffic data, our understanding of how our infrastructure is used increases.

"We are living at a time with an increased focus on data collection, which we in many cases don’t know how to make use of. In our Digital Mobility Lab, intensive work is underway to combine different data sources and different suppliers, for instance, GPS data and telephone data or Wi-Fi spot data in the models we develop. We’re afterwards able to offer completely new services with even greater social benefits than previously, and we’re likewise able to worker smarter and more effectively", Erik Hedman reports.

TomTom’s data is obtained from private vehicles and commercial traffic, either through the vehicles’ own equipment or from phone apps. All data is anonymous and cannot be traced back to the individual users. TomTom chose Ramboll as their strategic partner and distributor in the Nordic region due to their global presence within Smart Mobility and their superior expertise in the field. Furthermore, Ramboll’s desire to create added increased value for TomTom’s products, thus meeting the needs of the residents better.

Since last year, Ramboll has, also, been a Nordic retailer of data obtained from Inrix with a similar scope.