Location Intelligence Can Save Billions of Dollars In Public Infrastructure Investments

SINGAPORE,June 30,2020 -- It has now been a month since Quadrant's Asia Pacific Data Alliance (APDA) launched,and over 100 companies,including some of the world's leading consulting,geospatial and data analytics firms,have joined the program. The program helps leading corporations,governments,and researchers access quality mobile location data to understand the effects,mitigate the risks and optimize their solutions throughout the pandemic.

We are proud to present some of the pioneering work being done in the world of smart cities by one of our members,Mantra Studios. They are leading built environment intelligence agency focused on providing human insights within big data to help government,developers and designers create and invest in people-centric places. Mantra Studios makes it simple for their clients to understand their community by providing powerful insights on local audiences,uncovering commercial potential,highlighting spatial activity,and discovering the magnetism of places.

Calibrating Mobile Device Data with Smart City Data to Inform Urban Redevelopment Strategies During the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has created atypical demand patterns in cities and places,creating significant challenges for urban redevelopment in major cities. With social distancing and stay at home orders in effect,historic and trendline data sets are becoming increasingly sought after in the urban arena. They are especially used to inform business and planning strategies as they offer insights into patterns of place use and movement trends.

One of the primary challenges when relying on data findings to underpin long-term investments is that no single data source can provide information on place utilisation. To address this issue,Mantra Studios developed proprietary data calibration methods which use machine learning technologies to ingest cross platform smart city data sources (e.g. IOT,Wi-Fi,and sensor data) to produce reliable calibration metrics to enhance mobile location data,a key data source providing information on place use and utilisation.

In a recent project for a major transportation planning authority in Australia,Mantra Studios was engaged to provide insights into network utilisation during the pandemic.By joining the APDA,Mantra Studios leveraged historic city-scale mobile location data to produce core inputs into the cities multipurpose traffic simulation framework. This framework provides critical intelligence for the allocation of capital to improve and construct metropolitan transport infrastructure.

John Draper,Director of Data Analytics at Mantra Studios,explains,"By starting with metro-scale mobile location data from Quadrant,Mantra Studios was able to develop a city-wide demand model for vehicle movements - to and from major destination centres. This created valuable insights into when and how transport infrastructure was used over time as well as the relative demand profiles of each activity centre."

Location Intelligence can save Billions of Dollars in Public Infrastructure Investments

The next step was to calibrate the data using a combination of smart city data sources including SCATS (real-time traffic monitoring data on traffic signals to dynamically optimise congestion and improve traffic flow),city Wi-Fi,and public transport tag on/off terminal data. Using neural network regression analysis including Stochastic Gradient Descent and backpropagation algorithms,Mantra Studios was able to produce calibrated data sets and generate validated historic origin-destination matrices.

Applying machine learning regression analyses from diverse smart city data sources to mobile location data can deliver insights with levels of accuracy previously only achievable through the deployment of high cost sensors and manual survey methods. Julien Escande,General Manager of APAC at Quadrant,says,"By revealing patterns and trends of place use and movement,especially at macro or city scale,governments and business can potentially save billions of dollars in public infrastructure investments through optimal design and planning."

The Quadrant APDA program is still open,and data will remain available to all organizations that require mobile location data until July 31,2020. As part of the program all partners in this alliance will have access to APAC mobile location datasets that covers over 100 million devices and 50 billion events per month at no cost. Visit our APDA websiteto learn more and join.

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