Smarter city management

from Intertraffic World 2018

Drivers of urban mobility

With urban population densities continuing to rise, the need for intelligent traffic control systems is ever more apparent

Words | Antonio Marques, Grupo Etra, Spain

The world population in 2030 is expected to be about 8.4 billion, 60% of it in cities. One of the main challenges faced by these cities is the increase in congestion and the resulting effects: noise, accidents, greenhouse emissions, energy wastage, pollution, premature deaths, and, of course, the economic costs derived from all of this.

Unsustainable transport models

The vehicle-centered, fossil fuel-based mobility model is no longer sustainable. Instead, a people-centered, sustainable energy-based mobility model is needed. Mobility must serve the city, not the other way around.

Answering this challenge requires overcoming the private vehicle versus public transport battle. The future is multimodal, with new modes of transport expected to play a key role and traditional, sustainable modes predicted to radically increase their importance in, and share of, urban mobility. Advanced technologies are, and will continue to be, key in achieving efficiency, integration and ease of use.

The electric vehicle allows transportation without pollution, and autonomous vehicles offer endless possibilities for optimal management of travel and the traveler’s time.

Alternative modes of transport, such as bicycles, electric bicycles and a host of other vehicles – some powered by electricity and others by human energy – boost mobility and minimize the carbon footprint.

Other agents, such as logistic operators, fleet managers, Mobility as a Service managers and navigation application managers generate a wealth of information and, in addition to offering various services to the travelers, can collaborate with the public agencies that manage mobility.

V2I systems enable vehicles and infrastructure to share information between

Left: The status of

mobility in a specific geographic location can be easily located on Etra’s new platform

them. Autonomous vehicles in particular will rely on and are capable of processing significant amounts of information and able to respond to the inputs from the various agents.

The information provided by these agents allows an accurate knowledge of the behavior of mobility. Independent agencies that act on different aspects of mobility and cover the same area of influence, such as a city or a corridor, have the opportunity to share this information and to cooperate in the implementation of the best strategies of action.

New possibilities available

The Mistral platform from the Etra Group offers the potential for greater management of the city’s traffic flow. Mistral incorporates a set of functionalities that allow the different agencies of the smart city to manage it. Among them is the set of functionalities, born from Etra Group’s 30+ years of experience in the management of traffic and transport, which have been conceived especially for the management of mobility.

Mistral is a collaborative platform that integrates and elaborates mobility information generated by different agents such as traffic managers, public transport, fleet management, parking, mobility-asa-service operators, logistics operators, navigation applications, electric vehicle recharging infrastructure managers, vehicle rental companies, and so on. This information is processed and interpreted by the platform and made available to all these agents.

Doing the basics, and then some

Mistral provides basic mobility information to the rest of the smart city components, along with additional information on the mobility status of each geographic or control area and the strategies that are active.

Mistral allows the visualization and analysis of the basic information available as well as the information elaborated, using specific tools for mobility. The managers of the different agencies share precise and easily interpretable information.

The management of mobility requires, in addition to having the appropriate information, the ability to make decisions quickly to respond to the evolution of

mobility in real time. Mistral Expert System, based on a library of rules, makes decisions and carries out actions capable of directing the operation of the control systems of the different agencies. Its strategic manager, through pattern recognition and machine learning techniques, establishes the strategies of coordinated action of these control systems.

Coordinated and independent

As a collaborative tool, Mistral enables agencies to be completely coordinated even if they belong to independent organizations. Actions are coordinated between the different agencies by activating shared strategies. This collaboration can be extended to other agents involved in mobility services. The actions can be deployed directly through V2I, especially when the recipients are autonomous vehicles.

Mistral is a platform that uses the latest technologies (it’s open source and open data-enabled), and is scalable, highly reactive and interoperable with the main market standards. Mistral integrates its own vertical systems (traffic control, public transport, fleet management, parking, electric vehicle recharging, etc), but is also open to the integration of third-party systems and with other smart city platforms.

Mobility is rapidly changing with the emergence of alternative forms of transport and the new technologies that support them. This transformation will have profound consequences on the management of cities. The Mistral platform offers city managers the opportunity to take advantage of this opportunity before the anticipated changes take effect.

The platform integrates, elaborates and manages the information of the city, especially the mobility information. It enables managers to interpret abundant and complex information, and its scalability means that it can cover all kinds of cities, metropolitan areas and even specific areas such as corridors. Mistral allows collaboration between the different agencies and is able to give automated responses to detected situations, activating coordinated strategies of action. n

Above: Mistral provides