Traffic Services

ITIS (http://www.itisholdings.com) is the UK’s leading provider of transport, traffic and travel information, established to provide dynamic and predictive information for both business and leisure users of the British road and transport system. ITIS generates quality traffic information for the UK road network by combining journalistic traffic data and probe vehicles travelling the road networks.

Situation

ITIS generates huge amounts of data about traffic in Great Britain. The data as it is does not provide any real value to the customers without a clear and simple method of using this data for their needs. To provide this value, ITIS decided to convert the traffic data into a set of services which can be used in any third-party applications – or just for visual representation of traffic information on a map. The information ITIS provided is based on the complex processing of historical traffic data, so the main advantage of the data provided is that it is much more precise than any other existing traffic solutions – for example, it provides different data in different time of the day and day of the week for the same road.

Solution

ITIS approached Aplana with a lot of data and a bright idea which they wanted to use to develop a new business model – software as a service (SaaS). Today ITIS provides seven unique software services, developed by Aplana specialists, for such markets as logistics, property, government, automotive and others.
To build these services Aplana’s experts have developed a unique solution that calculates isochrones (places of an equal journey time to the same location) and puts them on the map. Such characteristics as start location; time of day; day of week; and desired time on trip are taken into account. The algorithm for time calculation required the tracking of time necessary for traveling through every part of the road, which varies with time of day and day of week. Therefore, the necessity to design an algorithm of the fastest route using dynamic data emerged. Another difficulty appeared to be a statistic data size of 20 Gb. At first, data processing was planned to be executed on the Customer's server during some time and then e-mailed to the user.

As a result, Aplana has worked out a complex algorithm that processes large amounts of data gathered from different sources in a real time mode. Maps and isochrones are displayed using MS Virtual Earth and MapPoint Server technologies.

This solution was realized due to a proactive use of Microsoft technologies.

In the start of the project Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition was used as the prime tool. Together with Team Foundation Server it highly simplified the project management as well as its development.
In 2008 we moved to Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition, which provides a strong set of tools (e.g. LINQ) and supports the new version of С#, which is used for development of the services. Use of unit-testing facilities in Visual Studio enabled Aplana specialists to debug basic algorithms quickly and efficiently. 

The use of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, which supports inbuilt geographical types of data and space indexing, helped to optimize the code of already developed components and simplified development of new services.
 
The site, built on ASP.NET using , acts as the user interface, and Virtual Earth and MapPoint Server are used for visualization of maps and isochrones.

The service-oriented architecture (SOA) was used and the set of Web-services based on WCF is at the heart of the system.
As a result, the core system enables easy integration (for instance, the ability of third developers to use the system) and configurability. In particular, the system uses such transports as HTTP, TCP and MSMQ to access to its functions.

Advantages

Nowadays there are no similar services on the market, so, the solution developed by Aplana has contributed to ITIS being regarded as a pioneer,. These services are truly unique, because they provide information depending on traffic on various roadways at different times of the day and days of the week. The main advantages of these services are that they are online, so the user gets the relevant information immediately; they are intuitive in use and vivid; and they make life for many people much easier. These services have a great potential in various spheres. For example:

• Transport and logistics companies & large retail networks: traffic services can help them to map optimal route for cargo traffic, ensure its running schedule and, therefore, timely cargo delivery.
• Travel agencies can reduce time spent in traffic jams by tourist groups and offer an additional service to choose an itinerary for those who prefer to travel on their own.
• Property agencies can enhance the quality of services and, therefore, their market value, by introducing a new service while choosing a place of residence or office lease.

Traffic Services is a bright example of how two companies with deep levels of expertise in their own fields can collaborate to create innovative tools and services for a wider audience. Aplana and ITIS continue to work on new projects and exploring ways of turning the data into meaningful and valuable services.