Smart Maps part 2of 4; Smart Traffic Prediction Maps

Yesterday we looked at Daily Plague Forecasts, to start our smart map series.

Today, I'll explore a Smart Traffic Prediction Map that has been developed by Eric Horvitz at Microsoft Research in Redmond Washington to help keep drivers away from traffic jams.

From New Scientist this week (Oct 21, 2006, pg 32):

"Few things are more irritating than leaving a busy main road to avoid a traffic jam, only to find that everyone else has had the same idea and you are stuck behind yet another queue.

Now a smart electronic map has been developed to help drivers find the best route, using information on nearby roads together with the day of the week, time, weather conditions and the speed of traffic on nearby roads.  Crucially, the software can use road configurations it already knows about to predict how traffic on unfamiliar ones will behave."

[...]

The software called ClearFlow, extends traffic prediction to all roads. Horvitz was able to train his model to predict with 80% accuracy how all side streets would react to changing traffic speed on main arteries."

ETA: available online for Seattle in 2007 via Windows Live. Other US cities to follow.

Full Text (subscription required) see here [...]

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

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Comments

[James Taylor]

Nice example of automated decision-making in the real world. All the data on maps and traffic is of no use unless decisions can be made with it. Sounds like this group has figured out how to use the data with generic and specific rules as well as some kind of predictive analytics to make decisions about routing. Very nice.