Pune: Dutch navigation company and a major geographical information systems (GIS) provider, TomTom inaugurated its third Traffic Centre at its Centre of Excellence in Pune on Thursday at TomTom office in Shastrinagar, Yerawada.
Speaking at a press meet Alain De Taeye, Member of Management Board, TomTom said that Pune joins Amsterdam and Berlin sites in showcasing TomTom’s technology and engineering excellence in the area of navigation, maps and traffic which can help pave the way to smarter mobility in the city. "The Traffic Centre was developed after years of hard work by various engineers which help collecting data and designing, updating digital maps," added Alain.
The Traffic Centre in Pune will demonstrate how TomTom turns data into actionable insights that can help traffic city planners and citizens make smarter decisions which can help in reducing road congestions. "For instance, once the big data is collected, it is analysed and the results can be used to predict congestion at a particular stretch thus helping a user to plan better. The user is made aware of the traffic congestion and accordingly he can either sleep longer of wake up early depending on the traffic congestion," added Alain.
Speaking on the scope of TomTom products, Alain said that India is a major potential market and Pune contributes significantly to TomTom's map and traffic products.
Dhanashree Rajopadhye, Director Software Engineering, TomTom India said that TomTom offers innovative mapmaking technologies and engineering innovations such as TomTom’s HD Map with RoadDNA."The Big Data is collected and artificial intelligence is used to generate predictive traffic intelligence.The Traffic centre showcases maps and traffic using trillions of GPS measurements collected every minute of the day," she added.
TomTom uses Portable Navigation Devices (PND), navigation apps, mobile phones and other technologies to collect data which is used for further analysis.
Speaking of the accuracy of collected data, Alain said that the data collected by devices is fairly accurate and while comparison the predicting the results the historical data collected over the period of time is also used for precise results.
"The information collected can also be used in new road developments in the city," he added.
Speaking about challenges for such technology in Indian cities Alain said that Indian commuters do not follow lane system and so aggregating accurate data becomes a challenge but can be managed. "Similarly, as Indian cities have more two-wheeler users, enabling these two wheelers with GPS devices can be beneficial to gather more data and thus increasing accuracy of prediciton of traffic congestion on roads," he added.
