Solving the conflict between road safety and accessibility with IoT technology

The conflict between accessibility and safe speed on our streets and roads is nothing new. Congestion on city streets – and the resulting safety issues – predates the industrial revolution, the motor vehicle, and the modern city. It was a problem in 17^th century London, and it was a problem in 19^th century New York City, and yet even today, in the 21^st century, we are still tackling these key issues — safety and accessibility — with environmental challenges now added to the mix. Rapidly increasing urban populations exacerbate the problems and cities are struggling to address them.

Edeva, based in Sweden, leverages IoT to give cities and municipalities an end-to-end solution that addresses not just accessibility and safety, but also environmental challenges by gathering the right data for decision making, tailoring their solution to any city’s particular needs.

At its core, Edeva offers a software platform for smart cities called EdevaLive. It visualizes data, while monitoring and controlling technical solutions, and it all started with the Actibump system, a dynamic and intelligent traffic safety system that increases road safety and accessibility while also lowering emissions and noise.

“Actibump is not just hardware – it’s a product, a system, a solution designed to handle mobility and safety on our roads, which are challenges faced by cities across the world,” says David Eskilsson, CEO, Edeva.

The Edeva platform is an end-to-end solution designed to maintain Actibump deployments from start to finish and allows customers to see what is happening on their roads in real time. But while Actibump was initially designed for basic speed monitoring and control, a lot of new features and functions have been added based on customer needs, such as quality maintenance, service logs, different roles of users, and what they’re allowed to see. Today, EdevaLive has been transformed into a comprehensive platform which also includes handling information security.

“We are not a hardware or sensor supplier, and although we are not consultants, we sometimes are integrators. We don’t want to sell a device – our customers don’t need a device, they need a solution to address their challenges, particularly around pollution and the environment,” says David Eskilsson. “We’re fulfilling an existing need, addressing an existing challenge and trying to make digitalization useful and manageable for anyone to get the benefits from it.”

From a practical point of view, – or under – the legal speed limit. If it detects a vehicle speeding, a hatch is activated. The hatch will lower a few centimeters, creating an inverted speed bump, giving the driver a gentle reminder of the speed limit. With the added sensors and other technology that monitor everything from air quality to type of vehicle, customers can see what is happening on their roads in real time in the EdevaLive dashboard. While the platform is a real-time tool designed to understand what is happening in the moment, the data can also be used for city planning because they’ll have data-driven insights that allow them to make better decisions and to follow up on results.

“Customers are getting air quality data, how many vehicles and what types of vehicles are using a particular road, wear and tear on that road, what’s the correlation with road repairs – this data gives them a big picture perspective,” says David Eskilsson. “We work to give them a correct baseline of the situation they’re looking at. If it’s an environmental zone, how does it look today? We need to learn from the history but also find a way of working where we can always understand what is happening.”

When you have the history and the current state of things, customers can start taking decisions based on that information, such as implementing an environmental zone. The data helps them to understand the issues and why compliance is low and what happens if it’s low, and what is good enough? Is 95% compliance a good and reasonable target?

The platform is able to sort out vehicles, such as buses, which allows users to see that buses have a huge rate of compliance, nearly 100%, when compared to passenger vehicles, which are not nearly as compliant when it comes to traffic rules.

“When you start to dig into this information, this data, you quickly understand it is, for example, company cars and vans travelling during the day that need to be addressed. Having this info, this data, allows you to figure out how to raise compliance among this group,” explains David Eskilsson.

If the city can narrow things down with data it allows them to know where to start and what the problem is, such as there is a lack of alternative routes for these vehicles to get to their destination or maybe things aren’t signposted well enough. The core of the problem is understanding who isn’t complying and why, and also how to address the non-compliers and change their behavior.

Almost all data capturing is done continuously, so customers have the history and the state of things today – and the ‘state of today’ will change day to day, week to week, year to year. Monitoring and following this to get solid data will lead to good decision-making. Previously, without this data, it might take five years to act upon a challenge and often that is too late, the state of things has already changed into something different, maybe even worse. Having this data helps address challenges quickly and precisely and then address new issues as they occur.

Through the dashboard, visualized data can be acted upon by all stakeholders, such as the bus company or the municipality.

“We’ve gone from pure traffic safety data with speeds and trends to vehicle categorization, where we can see if it’s a truck or a car or a bus. And then there is environmental sensing, which is one of the components municipalities need to do their job properly. Over the last few years, we’ve done a lot of work with license plate detection and squeezing the most out of that data.”

A good example of how this works is in the Södermalm neighborhood of Stockholm. The street Swedenborgsgatan has a lot of schools in the area and this street is pedestrianized during summer. Trash removal and other services requiring vehicles are allowed to operate on the street, but regular traffic is barred. With the data gathered from Edeva, the city can pedestrianize the street in a controlled and feasible way, while visualizing in a factual way what is happening and what the results are. Showing the data over time backs up arguments for and against, allowing for data-driven decision making.

The need for global IoT connectivity

When Edeva first started, the company had one solution with one type of need when it came to connectivity, so a mobile SIM card in their devices was enough to cover their needs. Over time, though, they saw that when they used third party equipment, that equipment might have, for example, a sleep mode functionality with a very low data set. As Edeva added video and radar, both of which can take a lot of data, they realized they needed not just connectivity, but the right kind of connectivity to handle their different requirements.

“We’re using IoT devices, radar, and GPS because we need all of these setups to do everything we want to do, especially since we are dealing with real time applications,” says David Eskilsson. “Previously we had to pay three months ahead for an ordinary broadband subscription, which was fine for the static Actibumps but the more flexible we need to be the more we need connectivity and a platform that is flexible, solid, and reliable.”

To manage their connectivity, Edeva utilizes Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL), which allows them to activate and deactivate SIM cards, and gives them the flexibility they require. As more features are added to the Edeva solution, more and more data is being transferred.

“We need a good operator who can work as a partner and grow with us and help us as we add new devices and need to adjust our rate plans, communication plans, etc. – basically we need control over everything, and we get that with Cisco IoT Control Center and Tele2 IoT.

“The data we get from the connectivity is very valuable for us, so having the right connectivity is crucial. Even if we have a failure, the data that results from that is still valuable for us in terms of growth and development. We can rely on IoT Control Center to tell us when there is a data loss, IoT Control center also provides the overview and flexibility to be able to merge and combine different systems, sensors, units, etc. in a professional way.”

The future of Edeva

Adoption of the Edeva solution will be on different levels for different municipalities, regions and countries, as needs are different everywhere. The flexibility of the Edeva solution, though, allows them to serve these different needs, thereby giving the cities the tools they need to make positive changes that enhance quality of life for residents and visitors.

“Traffic and road safety are global issues. When it comes to challenges around the environment, time is running out. We created our system to be flexible and responsive to different customer’s needs because we want to be able to help the customer no matter where they are in their urban planning. They can buy an end-to-end solution from us, or they can integrate what they need from our solution into an already existing system – we are ready and able to adapt.”