Dive Brief:
- Internet of things (IoT) company Geotab last week announced the launch of its new website that gives public access to various datasets that can help municipal leaders and organizations "improve city-wide efficiency, discover key infrastructure challenges and guide deployment of automated solutions for issues such as congestion, parking and poor road conditions."
- More than one million commercial vehicles globally are equipped with Geotab telematics, and the featured datasets leverage billions of data points collected from those vehicles.
- The datasets include information on hazardous driving areas, areas of idling across cities, cell coverage dark spots, road impediments, hyper-local temperature, hyper-local barometric pressure and parking challenges.
Dive Insight:
The growth of data and IoT applications have provided many opportunities for cities to evaluate city efficiency, yet some cities have not unlocked these opportunities due to a lack of knowing how to analyze collected data. Private sector companies like Geotab are crucial to helping cities visualize challenges such as congestion and poor road conditions in order to develop solutions.
"Each dataset, including weather, urban infrastructure or location analytics, will advance driver and road safety measures, ultimately paving the way for safer, more sustainable and advanced smart city development," said Geotab Vice President of Data & Analytics Mike Branch in a statement.
Geotab has already partnered with Columbus, OH, allowing the city to integrate data from its Smart Columbus Operating System (SCOS) with Geotab to improve city operations. Other cities such as Detroit are also looking to increase connected vehicle infrastructure and road safety technology, and as autonomous vehicles (AVs) become more ubiquitous, so will the need for intelligent datasets that can track their implementation and progress.
Geotab is just one of many companies hoping to infiltrate the smart city industry with impactful data tools. Though with Geotab's expansive network of commercial vehicles, it has arguably cornered the market of smart fleet insights.
