Tapping big data to fuel smart city development
It has become clear that the key to successfully transforming our urban areas into “smart” cities takes collaboration and support from a group of committed solution providers. Some of the best advances are coming from companies that have recognized these interdependencies and have combined their expertise in innovative ways.
Take a look at the Urbanomics Mobility Project, an innovative big data initiative that helps promote sustainable growth by relating the travel needs of citizens to the economic activity they engage in. This project combines Urban Insights’ big data and analytics expertise, Cubic Transportation Systems’ heritage in public transportation, spending trends and insights derived from 43 billion transactions processed over the MasterCard network, and Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. Each partner brings something unique and vital to this industry collaboration.
The Urbanomics Mobility Project provides a big data platform that easily connects how people live and move around cities with how they influence the local economy. Specifically, the platform overlays merchant data on top of a city’s transportation system to determine not just how people are moving around cities, but why they’re moving. By combining the why with the how, city officials can identify patterns that have long been considered the Holy Grail of urban planners and commercial developers.
With insights such as this, opportunities abound to make cities more livable while cultivating sustainable economic growth.
We recently completed a prototype of our data analysis platform, and our goal is to partner with a major city to implement it within the next six months. Over the coming years, we aim to bring the Urbanomics Mobility Project to many cities around the globe so they, too, can harness the power of big data in groundbreaking ways.
To learn more, please see our Urban Mobility Project overview. And if you have questions, feel free to contact us at info@urban-insights.com.
Learn more about Cubic Transportation Systems’ smart city solutions on Twitter and more Urban Insights projects on Twitter. Follow Microsoft CityNext on Twitter for news, trends, and smart city solutions.
Phil Silver, Director of Business Development for Urban Insights Associates, Inc.
Phil Silver has 27 years of experience in marketing and business development. He joined Cubic in 2012 and was on the team that founded Urban Insights in 2014. Phil is a retired U.S. Navy Captain and one of the founders of Mad Science of New York, a company that provides science enrichment programs to thousands of children each year.
