Skip to main content

Smart data to help manage congestion in the Philippines

Traffic management agencies and city planners will soon have access to real-time data to better manage traffic flows on the streets of Cebu City and Metro Manila. The World Bank, the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and Grab, a third-party ride booking app provider, have launched the OpenTraffic initiative, which it is hoped will help address traffic congestion and road safety challenges.
May 5, 2016 Read time: 2 mins

Traffic management agencies and city planners will soon have access to real-time data to better manage traffic flows on the streets of Cebu City and Metro Manila.

The 2000 World Bank, the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and Grab, a third-party ride booking app provider, have launched the OpenTraffic initiative, which it is hoped will help address traffic congestion and road safety challenges.

Grab and the World Bank have been developing free, open-source tools that translate Grab’s voluminous driver GPS data into traffic statistics, including speeds, flows, and intersection delays. These statistics power big data open source tools such as OpenTraffic, for analysing traffic speeds and flows.

In the near future, traffic statistics derived through OpenTraffic will be fed into another application called DRIVER or Data for Road Incident Visualisation, Evaluation, and Reporting for road incident recording and analysis. This application, developed by the World Bank, will help engineering units to prioritise crash-prone areas for interventions and improve emergency response.

“Using big data is one of the potential solutions to the challenges faced by our transport systems. Through this we can provide accurate, real-time information for initiatives that can help alleviate traffic congestion and improve road safety,” said DOTC Secretary Joseph Emilio A. Abaya.

“By leveraging advances in open-software and big data collaborations with companies like Grab, transport managers and city planners can have access to the most advanced congestion management analytical tools available,” said Mara Warwick, World Bank country director.

UTC

Related Content

  • January 22, 2015
    Cubic Joins Smart Cities Council
    Cubic Transportation Systems has joined the Smart Cities Council, a coalition of industry thought leaders, innovators and practitioners dedicated to improving the liveability, workability and sustainability of the world’s cities. A booming global population puts pressure on cities facing the inevitable question of how to manage personal travel within geographic and infrastructure constraints. Cubic enables greater integration across all modes of travel by leveraging data to generate predictive, personali
  • January 26, 2012
    New technology revolution in urban traffic control?
    Urban traffic control is a well-defined and practised art. Nevertheless, there are technologies here and on the horizon with the potential to revolutionise how we do things. By Gavin Jackman and Andrew Kirkham, TRL, and Jason Barnes. Distributed monitoring and control of urban traffic networks and flows is nothing new. PC-based Urban Traffic Control (UTC) is now well established and operating in many locations around the world. However, it is worth considering the effects of the huge growth in the use of sm
  • August 16, 2013
    Vietnam uses big data to transform city systems
    With one of the highest population growths in Vietnam and the subsequent strain on resources, Da Nang, the country’s fourth largest city, has turned to IBM technology to increase the manageability and efficiency of the city’s systems. Using IBM’s intelligent operations centre, the Da Nang government will address two of the most significant issues impacting life in the city, transportation and water. The solution provides a summary of events and incidents through maps, dashboards and alerts, allowing city pe
  • November 18, 2022
    NCDoT mobilises with Iteris ClearGuide
    ClearGuide smart mobility infrastructure system will help identify traffic problems statewide