4: DATA MANAGEMENT, ANALYSIS VISUALISATION

4:

DATA MANAGEMENT, ANALYSIS & VISUALISATION

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Supporting transport planning through a changing world

With plans to reach net zero by 2050 now set in law, a step change will be required to ensure that transport plays its role in decarbonisation. By Simon Lusby, Head of Transport Planning, City Science

When we started City Science five years ago, we were motivated both by the potential for technology to enhance general tools and processes, but also by the growing need to urgently respond to the climate emergency.

Over the past five years, the importance of this issue has grown significantly. Transport is now the largest contributor to carbon emissions in the UK and, in an average local authority, represents 35% of emissions.

With plans to reach net zero by 2050 now set in law, a step change will be required to ensure that transport plays its role in decarbonisation.

Within our Cadence toolkit, we provide a range of tools to help plan for the required changes. Through our research partnerships with a number of the UK’s leading universities, we adapt to this change by continuously updating the tooling within the Cadence suite to ensure that practitioners have access to the insights to help address the greatest challenges facing the industry.

Decarbonisation Strategies

The first question decision makers face when considering the fundamental carbon reductions required is: where to start?

While over two thirds of local authorities have declared a climate emergency, the approach to developing decarbonisation targets or strategies varies considerably from place-to-place.

This is because if you were to stop and ask a person in the street what the most effective measures to decarbonise transport would be, you would likely get a wide range of answers: investing in active travel to catalyse a modal shift; incentivising electric vehicles; changing the way freight is delivered; or changing planning guidance around new developments.

In order to provide a quantified approach and support Local Authorities in developing their strategic thinking, City Science developed a transport decarbonisation tool. This tool is a robust starting point to help understand the overall decarbonisation challenge, and acts as a useful solution to help initiate the strategic thinking across a region.

The tool itself enable users to understand the key drivers of transport carbon emissions within their region, to set decarbonisation targets and to progress the strategic

City Science Decarbonisation Policy Tool

Cadence: difference in travel times from simulated reallocation of road space

Cadence: Electric Vehicle data, WPD South West

interventions most appropriate to their area.

Interventions can be grouped together to provide a full pathway to net zero carbon. At each stage, the tool allows users to clearly quantify and articulate the impact of strategic interventions, identifying any gaps that may need to be addressed further.

With integration to annuallyupdated open data and APIs, the tool can be regularly updated to track progress over time, and can thus form a core component of your region’s decarbonisation approach.

The tool is free to access and can be provided to all authorities, even those without a Cadence license: please get in contact via the details at the end of this article.

Active travel

Having developed a decarbonisation strategy, local authorities are then likely to develop strategies for active travel such as Local Cycling and Walking Innovation Plans (LCWIPs).

Cadence includes a bespoke LCWIP toolkit, which has been designed with features specifically to support planning for active travel.

These include data layers covering active travel propensity, active travel networks, query-able road safety data, journey times and other specialist analysis such as mesh density.

But Cadence also allows web-based simulation and ‘what-if’ analysis, going way beyond simple visualisation. This enables multiple stakeholders, including nonmodellers, to collaborate in identifying and testing potential active transport interventions.

Specifically, Cadence can be used to simulate the impact of road or lane closures. For example, in the graphic (bottom right) we have simulated the impact of a lane closure enacted to improve road safety within the town centre.

The analysis runs end-to-end (outside of the transport model), immediately providing outputs to help users identify and quantify the potential impacts on other road users.

Journey time analysis using our tables and isochrones helps dynamically filter to understand the areas most affected and how significant an impact is likely to be.

This rapid and robust analysis can be instrumental in helping support engagement with stakeholders and conducting early sifting of options as part of scheme development.

Electrification

Electrification of transport is a further area of intervention that is likely to be key to achieving decarbonisation goals. Cadence is therefore configured to consolidate data and analysis to support the interaction between transport and energy networks.

To achieve this we combine data from the regional transport model with data on

l local electrical grid capacity and headroom, l electric vehicle charging networks, l electric vehicle uptake projections for a range of different consumer scenarios, l and delivery of charging infrastructure.

Combining this data with our models allows a range of future demand and uptake scenarios to be tested to inform the key infrastructure needs to support electrification and decarbonisation of transport.

What’s next?

As we emerge together from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear we are in a period of significant change. City Science is committed to building tools that evolve with the changing needs of transport practitioners to address new challenges as they emerge. We’re continuously adding to the capabilities of our products to deliver just that.

If you’d like to find out more about how Cadence and our wider team can support you, both now and in the future, please visit us at www.cityscience.com or email us at info@cityscience.com. n

In order to support Local Authorities in developing their strategic thinking, City Science developed a transport decarbonisation tool to help understand the overall decarbonisation challenge

City Science is an independent firm of software developers, data scientists and infrastructure experts.

Founded out of the need to respond to climate change, and data-led in everything we do, we are committed to advancing our customersʼ understanding of the systems they operate, and to helping them reduce waste, improve efficiency and support a better world.

Contact Laurence Oakes-Ash loa@cityscience.com www.cityscience.com Software: Cadence

Cadence is an award-winning suite of data management and modelling tools for transport planners and modellers.

The solution comprises: l Award-winning data visualisation and stakeholder engagement l Rich, curated data layers relevant to the needs of modern transport strategies, including support for active travel, electrification and decarbonisation l Version-controlled data management for robust transport model and plan development l Web-based simulation and scenario testing l Visualisation and analysis of demand flows, travel times and accessibility l Support for road, public transport and active travel data

Cadence can provide additional support for modelling workflows through data pipelines and APIs to an extensive library of modelling algorithms.

Contact Laurence Oakes-Ash info@cityscience.com www.dat-stats.cityscience.com

DataCutter simplifies access to large national datasets, taking the heavy load of querying and cutting data up for its users.

DataCutter is a powerful website that offers access to free data such as the 2011 census and simple road networks, through to paid subscriptions offering access to public transport timetables, premium road networks such as Ordnance Survey Highways and detailed Points of Interest data.

Draw or upload your own map boundary, or use one of our preselected areas and download datasets for anywhere in Great Britain.

Contact Lester Chine sales@basemap.co.uk 01483 688 470 www.basemap.co.uk/datacutter/ Software: notanotherapp

The notanotherapp plugin works in direct companionship with the Open Parking Platform. The naa system allows for multi-vendor cashless app providers to be seamlessly integrated into multiple MaaS sites across many networks. The naa system also brings together historically fragmented communication between multiple vendors allowing for real time tariff updates, occupancy data and site information adjustments.

As well as providing the multi-vendor service, the naa system also brings together high level analytical and statistical information. This data is in turn supported by the input360 software to allow for modelling and machine learning programmes. These programmes will assist in all future development and policy changes.

Contact Tim Pryor info@notanotherapp.co.uk 0333 240 1062 www.notanotherapp.co.uk

Software: Input360

Unlock the power of your data with interactive dashboards and reporting that inspires smarter economical and environmental decisions. Input360 is the latest software evolution from Solutionlabs which brings together rich analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence from global service providers in MaaS and DaaS, including the Open Parking Platform and notanotherapp.

Input360 aims to provide a real-time interpretation of the data you're seeing. It provides you with learnt predictive models that will build the basis for all future policy changes and environmental impact reporting. Bringing together data from across all MaaS networks, as well as global stat providers, the input360 engine will give you realtime insight into proposed changes across your network.

The universal data contained within Input360 is supported by our unparalleled service, built on a secure and proven cloud infrastructure, that is scalable to support any size network.

Contact Tim Pryor info@solutionlabs.co.uk 0333 240 1062 www.solutionlabs.co.uk/input360 Software: Planwisely

Planwisely is a new cloud-based mapping platform designed to help planners, analysts, policymakers and stakeholders produce more informed outcomes for their cities and communities. Developed by VLC, the platform is used by local, state and federal governments around Australia to help shape our cities and regions.

The platform includes access to hundreds of preloaded spatial datasets, satellite imagery, dynamic accessibility analysis and demographics filtering. In addition, Planwisely has been set up to enable easy access to third-party data including traffic counts, transport modelling outputs for multiple scenarios, 3D buildings and many more.

Most importantly, the platform helps those without extensive GIS data interact with spatial data and analysis through a user-friendly interface, providing access to all the spatial data and tools needed for evidence-based planning. Planwisely makes it easy for technical teams to share mobility data and analysis with colleagues.

Contact Aliasgar Inayathusein aliasgar.inayathusein@veitchlister.com.au www.planwisely.io

AGILYSIS

Product: CrashMap Pro – Online mapping solution Contact: Lyndsey Owen lyndsey.owen@agilysis.co.uk www.agilysis.co.uk/portfolio-item/crashmap-pro

AGILYSIS

Product: Route Risk Analysis Contact: Lyndsey Owen lyndsey.owen@agilysis.co.uk www.agilysis.co.uk/portfolio-item/route-riskanalysis

AGILYSIS

Product: Speed Compliance Dashboard – A powerful yet easy-to-use solution providing access to information about speed limits and average speeds on roads across Great Britain Contact: Lyndsey Owen lyndsey.owen@agilysis.co.uk www.agilysis.co.uk/portfolio-item/speedcompliance-dashboard

CALIPER

Product: TransCAD – Americaʼs most popular transportation planning software with traffic signals, TIA, modelling and visualisation Contact: sales@caliper.com www.caliper.com/tcovu.htm

CHIPSIDE

Product: Oppidatum – City data modelling Contact: Simon Cheung simon.cheung@chipside.com www.chipside.com/oppidatum

ITO WORLD

Product: ITO Transit Data – Transit data platform Contact: info@itoworld.com www.itoworld.com/ito-transit-data

LIFTSHARE

Product: Liftshare Platform – Car sharing platform Contact: Ali Clabburn a-clabburn@liftshare.com www.mobilityways.co.uk

LIFTSHARE

Product: MobilityWay – Average commuter emissions level tool Contact: Ali Clabburn a-clabburn@liftshare.com www.mobilityways.co.uk

MATATIKA

Product: Matatika Mobile Contact: Aaron Phethean aphethean@matatika.com www.matatika.com

ONETRANSPORT

Product: Data Platform – The oneTRANSPORT Data Marketplace is a modern, neutral smart city data solution that enables Smart City data to be fully exploited across multiple applications and services, by both public and private organisations Contact: info@onetransport.io www.onetransport.io

OPENDATASOFT

Product: Data Platform – Opendatasoft is the data sharing platform teams use to access, reuse, and share data that grows business Contact: www.opendatasoft.com

TRANSPORTAPI

Product: Data aggregation platform underpinning managed services Contact: info@transportapi.com www.transportapi.com