Vivacity Labs, London-based transport technology scale-up, and Vaisala, a global environmental measurements firm, have partnered to install air quality and weather sensors in the same locations as traffic sensors, with the aim of exploring the difference in traffic flow as the weather changes.
Vivacity’s sensors, which use artificial intelligence and machine learning to capture anonymous traffic counts of different transport modes across a selected ‘count line’, will pair its sensors with Vaisala’s weather and environmental measurement products, in a pilot designed to enhance safety, efficiency, and decision making.
Mark Nicholson, CEO and co-founder at Vivacity Labs, said: “The conversation around air quality, sustainability and the impact of travel has become essential, and it’s great to be partnering with Vaisala to provide key and new data for local authorities and researchers.
“By providing these insights, decisions can be made about infrastructure and both immediate and longer term plans can be put in place to improve air quality.”
The partnership will work with West Midlands 5G and Transport for West Midlands in the next stage of the £5.8m Road Sensor Network Project. These sensors will provide detailed insights into both street level and large-scale weather and air quality changes across the region.
Around 350 sensors – provided by Vivacity and Vaisala – will be deployed across the seven constituent authorities of the West Midlands Combined Authority area, before its conclusion in March 2022. It is hoped the findings will support other regions in developing similar networks to ease congestion hotspots and more intuitively manage traffic flow.
Danny Johns, business development manager, weather and environment, at Vaisala added: “Using weather and air quality data together with Vivacity’s traffic sensors provides valuable input to facilitate smoother traffic flows in the West Midlands region and demonstrates the power of the close collaboration between our two organisations.
“These various data sources help build a better understanding of the key relationship between the vehicles, the pollution they create, and the way that pollution either stays close to the ground or disperses depending on the prevailing weather conditions.”
