By Mario Bellotti, Head of Strategic Marketing and Big Data Business Development
Vem Solutions
The awareness of the opportunities arising from Big Data has been incessantly growing for years now. This trend is confirmed by Italian CEOs and Innovation Managers, who are regarding Business Intelligence, Big Data and Analytics as some the main investment priorities in the coming years. In 2016, according to the Polytechnic of Milan, Osservatori.net, the Analytics market continued to expand, reaching a total value of 905 million euros, with a growth rate of 15% compared to the previous year. The Business Intelligence component within it grew by 9% and reached 722 million euros, while the Big Data component increased by 44%, reaching 183 million euros. The current mobility model offers ample scope for action to improve efficiency and reduce the costs of pollution, accidents, traffic jams and lack of efficiency of public transport services – costs that are borne by society as a whole. There is a need to take action and streamline the system so as to bring benefits in terms of savings and quality of service, increasing the competitiveness of territories and businesses. The objective is to create, through the analysis of data, a detailed knowledge of the current state of road mobility – type of vehicles circulating and load transported, routes taken, average distances, cargo handling, O/D matrices, traffic status in real time, dangerous road sections, weather conditions and so on – and to increase the community’s demand for mobility, in order to have an overall picture of the size and distribution of vehicle flows over the entire urban and suburban road network. All of this will also allow us to understand the characteristics of mobility, logistics and traffic flows including those related to exceptional vehicles and transport, and to learn about the traffic flows in order to optimize public services and freight transport in urban and suburban areas. All this information, if properly processed, allows us to assess, on the basis of objective data, the need for interventions to upgrade, improve and strengthen the road networks, and to acquire a methodology of analysis with which to support the planning of targeted interventions in the field of sustainable mobility. Another goal is to promote initiatives through which to test innovative solutions and urban mobility services, in partnership with both public and private parties (carpooling, car sharing, etc.) in order to reduce the number of circulating cars and improve road safety, and to implement traffic optimization initiatives at key mobility points such as interports, hubs, logistics nodes, motorway segments, etc. To make this real, Viasat can provide various solutions, ranging from the supply of raw data, to more in-depth analyses (dashboards, cartography, reports, geofencing appications) with details on: traffic information and control; origin and destination matrices; commuting traffic to/from interchange nodes; routes and distances covered; parking maps; planning and access of commercial vehicles in controlled areas; loading/unloading of goods in the interports and parking time inside the areas; analyses for different periods (hours/days/months…), on specific road areas and segments; road conditions and dangerous locations. All this comes with the option of including information on vehicle type and, if necessary, transported cargo type. Depending on contingent requirements, it is also possible to modify the spatial and temporal boundaries of the analyzed areas from time to time, in order to extract information, process it and visualize it on appropriate dashboards, and then proceed with an evaluation of the appropriate interventions. Finally, it is possible to customize views, information layers and reports as needed. The data and information are acquired by Viasat Group through its communication software; they are processed and stored by Viasat and Vem in full respect of the customers’ privacy. This huge amount of information, if properly managed and processed, makes it possible to create services that can positively impact the security of drivers, as well as extraordinary opportunities for public and private companies (Telco, PA, insurance companies, car renters, transport and logistics companies, etc.) that choose telematics to optimize the management of their business and to improve their offer of mobility-related services.