What's the best way to travel in London and York?

18 March 2008

March 2008
 
What’s the best way to travel in London and York? An innovative new project will help
show the way to go.
 
The  Technology  Strategy  Board,  the Engineering  and  Physical  Sciences Research Council,  and  the
Department for Transport have contributed £3.1m towards funding project “Freeflow”.  Over the next three years, Freeflow’s team of industry experts, academic researchers and transport network operators will be changing travel, by turning traffic data into transport intelligence. Freeflow comprises  Transport  for  London  and  City  of  York  Council,  as  demonstrators  of  the  innovation
provided  from ACIS, Kizoom, Mindsheet, QinetiQ, Trakm8,  Imperial College London, Loughborough University and  the University of York.  Together  these partners have contributed £2m of  their own funds.

Freeflow is a pioneering initiative aiming to develop tools for managing and optimising road networks and, at the same time, informing and guiding travellers around these networks. Existing techniques for  handling  data  are  not  capable  of managing  the whole  network  proactively.  A  key  element  of Freeflow  is  therefore  to  allow  traffic managers  to  develop  intelligent  “situational  awareness”  of  all aspects of their networks.  By actively sharing this newly-developed awareness with travellers using new services such as Travel Angels and in-vehicle systems, Freeflow gives a powerful tool for managing transport by influencing demand directly.

Situational  awareness  is  not  just  a  transport  problem:  telecommunications,  the military  and  stock market companies already use new tools to build better awareness of situations from their data and make valuable and informed decisions from it.  

Freeflow’s specific objectives are therefore to:
•  Understand what  traffic managers want  from  “intelligent decision  support” and how  the public can then benefit;
•  Develop new data from currently under -used sensors like CCTV; 
•  Uniquely, bring military “situational awareness” tools that go far beyond “data” we collect now;
•  Measure effects on network performance in York and London;
•  Understand and solve the technical requirements for  new services;
 
For  road  users  specifically,  Freeflow  aims  to  assist  them  in  knowing what  is  happening, why  it  is happening, what will happen next and what action they can take to make things better for them.  Iain Gray, Chief Executive Officer of  the Technology Strategy Board said, “The goal of efficient and cost  effective  transport  is  an  important  for  our  society.  This combination of technologies  and capabilities is a truly novel way to address a problem that affects all of us.”

ACIS is one of the leading providers of Real Time Passenger Information (RTPI) solutions within the Transport Industry with a wealth of experience in the intelligent transport technology sector. ACIS is proud  to be an innovative partner in providing the intelligence and delivery of UTMC compliant data for FREEFLOW. Professor John Polak, Director of the Centre for Transport Studies Imperial College London says "We are delighted  to be part  of  this exciting  consortium, which will be working at the leading edge of transport  network  management.  It gives us the opportunity extend our work in network state estimation and prediction into real time control and to evaluate its benefit operationally." 
 
Kizoom, a leading provider of advanced transport information delivery systems, will be using Freeflow to enhance its next generation Travel Angel platform, ”Freeflow brings together key academic  and  industrial  expertise  to    break  new  ground  in real-time  travel  information“  says CTO Nick Knowles 
 
Loughborough University’s  team  led  by  Prof. Sameer Singh  at  the Research  School  of  Informatics brings  expertise  in  computer  vision  and  fusion  based  tools  to  develop  software  for  generating intelligence  from video content. This will provide traffic managers with further real-time information on traffic status.  

Mindsheet  specialises  in  helping  organisations  develop  breakthrough  solutions  in  highly  complex environments. We will focus on new ways to influence transport by providing situation information to travellers.  Raglan  Tribe,  MD  of  Mindsheet  Ltd  said,  “We  are  delighted  to  make  a  difference  by addressing some of the most challenging congestion spots around the UK.”

QinetiQ is a leading international defence and security technology company. Within Freeflow, QinetiQ will be developing  its Decision Desktop  technology to enable  traffic managers  to achieve situational awareness  of  urban  transport.  Peter  Baynham, MD  of QinetiQ’s  Command &  Intelligence  Systems Division  said:  “QinetiQ  is  delighted  to  be  a  key  partner  in  Freeflow  and  to  demonstrate  how technology  originally developed  for  the military domain  can be  successfully  transferred  to  the  civil
sector and transport in particular.”

Trakm8 Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trakm8 Holding PLC based in the UK and operating in the vehicle Time / Distance / Place market sector.  Trakm8  supplies  and  licenses  its  GPRS  based  GPS  vehicle  hardware,  enabling  software  and information management platforms both directly  to end  road user  customers and  through  selected distribution partners.  Alan Bristow director of  traffic operations at Transport  for London said “We are delighted  to play a leading role in the project, TfL see this as a key step in making the most of our existing technology investment and offering joined up services to travellers in London” Professor  Jim  Austin,  of  the  University  of  York's  Department  of  Computer  Science,  said:  “We  are proud to be involved in such a visionary project. It will enable our pattern analysis technology, Signal Data Explorer, to find events in traffic data and suggest new traffic control patterns. This is a major opportunity to work in a new field with potentially high impact and use." 

City of York Council’s UTMC Project Manager, Darren Capes, said: “Freeflow  represents an exciting opportunity for the City, and by building on our successful UTMC system will help us meet our vision of  using  intelligent  transport  systems  to  deliver  an  improved  travel  experience  to  residents  and visitors to the City.
 
 
Notes to Editors
The  Technology  Strategy  Board  is  a  business-led  executive  non-departmental  public  body, established  by  the  government.    Its  mission  is  to  promote  and  support  research  into, and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, in order to increase economic growth and improve the quality of life.  It is sponsored by the Department for
Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS).