Nigerians love to drive. Thankfully, car companies have always eyed Africa’s largest market by population with relish. A relatively young, socially aspirational, fast growing population and sprawling land mass has always been a perfect opportunity for car makers.
The regulatory and policy environment for the automobile industry is however only just beginning to attract manufacturing. Many firms are considering investing in Nigeria, and a few of them have already set up shop locally. This is a good omen for Business in Nigeria.
Transportation is however not only a policy or commercial proposition. Transportation has become a testing field for advanced computing solutions and services, as manual systems and manufacturing process begin to take advantage of advances in mobile technology and other computing technologies.
In an increasingly interconnected world, the ongoing pace of change means that transportation systems need to be constantly in ‘intelligent’ mode.
Only intelligent transportation systems can deal with knotty issues like traffic congestion which has become a plague on society, especially African societies. Too much traffic harms our health, impedes economic growth and impacts the environment. And while it seems like an insurmountable problem, it’s not. If we want to reduce gridlock traffic, however, we can’t just build more expressways and ask people to ride public transportation to work more often.
Instead, we need to make smarter decisions about how we manage traffic. In order to do that, we need to understand it. With the proliferation of mobile devices and the ability to analyze quintillions of data generated daily, cities are in a position to better understand traffic flow and how citizens use their transportation networks and improve upon them from data such as what, where and when people drive; how a particular model of vehicle performs in a variety of environments; and how many cars are on the road at any given location, at any given time.
In order for cities and populations to really benefit from this sort of information, though, car manufacturers need to work with transportation agencies, emergency responders and city planners to collect, integrate and share data. If a car breaks down on the highway, sensors installed in the vehicle could pick up on the problem and immediately notify traffic authorities of a possible slowdown. Other drivers on the road could be warned of traffic almost instantaneously, instead of waiting until they’re stuck in gridlock traffic for hours, after bypassing an alternative route.
Mobile technologies will play a critical role in the future of traffic management. You won’t have to pick up your phone to read a text message alerting you to a slowdown related to a major event — an in-car device may first learn of congestion and propose an alternative route. If a driver at the wheel has a seizure or heart attack, sensors on a steering wheel may detect the event and notify emergency responders.
Just as the internet was first made up of a network of computers, a network of smart devices make up the internet of things, and it will fundamentally change how we drive, and more importantly, how we live.
It probably sounds like a vision of the distant future, but it could just be around the corner. Much of this technology has been successfully tested, it just needs to be put to use. IBM recently completed a trial with the city of Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, in which smart devices were installed in roughly 200 cars. Over a period of six months, 1.8 billion sensor signals detected 48,000 traffic incidents, including icy roads, potholes, hazard lights, fog and so on.
The implications are tremendous, and not just for traffic management. Insight from this data would improve road safety, likely saving countless lives. City planners and transit agencies could use the information to build new housing developments or public transportation routes; emergency responders and law enforcement officials could get a more accurate sense of how to use their resources.
The data would also be extremely useful for auto manufacturers, who would get a detailed understanding of how their cars perform in a variety of environments, since the devices could collect braking, acceleration and location-based data. There’s also a trickle-down effect for a wide range of industries, including airlines, airports, retailers or even healthcare providers, who could use blood pressure or heart rate data collected by cars through seat belts, steering wheels, drivers’ seat and so on.
Traffic is an unfortunate fact of modern life. As long as people need to travel, it will exist. But instead of just commiserating about it, we can do much to reduce it, effectively manage it, and transform societies with the aid of Big Data, Cloud, Mobile and Social technologies.