SWARCO and MicroTraffic sign cooperation to improve safety at intersections
Near-miss situations now integrated in SWARCO MyCity urban mobility management suite
SWARCO takes the ITS World Congress in Los Angeles as platform to announce its latest cooperation agreement. Canadian start-up MicroTraffic is the new partner to add an important feature to SWARCO’s MyCity software suite, which helps mitigate accidents involving vulnerable road users.
It all started at Intertraffic Amsterdam in April this year, when the MicroTraffic won a challenge posed by the SWARCO Innovation Hub in the ITSUP area of the exhibition. The award was among other things an invite to an innovation sprint: a full immersion week in the Tyrolean mountains to develop jointly with SWARCO experts in a rapid prototyping approach the integration of near-miss analyses in the urban mobility management platform MyCity.
SWARCO CEO Michael Schuch said: “Road safety has always been a focal point for SWARCO. We are seeking innovative approaches to prevent injuries and fatalities. Teaming up with a start-up allowed us to implement the feature in MyCity through a great team effort in an agile process taking less than a week.”
“We are excited to work with SWARCO because of their commitment to road safety and innovation on a worldwide scale. SWARCO’s intersection controllers offer the chance to automate safety interventions, while the MyCity platform allows engineers to work with safety data in a powerful context”, said MicroTraffic CEO Craig Milligan.
The “MyCity Near Miss” prototype combines MicroTraffic’s near-miss data with MyCity’s map visualization and connectivity to a variety of sensors and data streams. The objective of combining two products is to become the premier source of risk management data for smart cities and smart cars pursuing vision zero. The prototype is implemented in Wolverhampton (UK), Los Angeles and Pasadena using real data, where the users are able to see the risk level of their intersections. The basic data include severity of near-misses, type of traffic mode involved in the near misses, a detailed visualization of near misses via a bar chart and access to the video clips of near misses. Additionally, cities that implemented certain measures to improve their intersection safety are able to visualize the before and after effect of their implementations and therefore assess the effectiveness of their interventions. MicroTraffic calculates near misses and their kinetic energy and has the ability to classify road users as vehicles, pedestrians, bikes and e-scooters. The value of near-miss data is to provide cities with accurate road safety information on their intersections and allow them to take proactive measures, such as reprogramming the signal phases, prioritizing vulnerabe road users or applying special road markings.
Announcing the new cooperation at the ITS World Congress in Los Angeles on 20 September 2022: from right: SWARCO CEO Michael Schuch, SWARCO Head of ITS portfolio management Laura Coconea, Craig Milligan, CEO of MicroTraffic
About MicroTraffic
Winnipeg/Manitoba-based MicroTraffic measures traffic near-misses from overhead cameras at intersections. This data helps cities to proactively diagnose risk, improve intersection safety, and track their progress. MicroTraffic’s technology uses proprietary computer vision and kinetic energy models to achieve a 94% accuracy in predicting crashes. Founded in 2017, MicroTraffic has 35 employees and serves more than 100 cities.