Mar/April 2009

Real-world road speeds are now available with Tele Atlas digital map data, enhancing its potential to produce accurate results in applications such as journey time calculation and scheduling optimisation.

The company's Speed Profiles data is derived from information captured from GPS-enabled devices in vehicles in daily use. The company says it includes 600 billion speed measurements shared by people described as 'consumers' in 26 countries over the past two years. The data is aggregated to establish typical speeds on individual road segments.

Coverage is currently offered for 24 European countries, encompassing 15.5 million kilometres and providing complete coverage of the navigable road network. Coverage in North America for Canada and the United States is said to encompass 19.5 million kilometres and approximately 90 per cent of the navigable road network.

The company contrasts this enhanced data with standard map data, which ignores the delaying effect of traffic signals, school journeys, peak-hour flows and so on.

 

Scheduling software is a primary application, and Tele Atlas says an early user is Routing International, a software firm specialising in transport planning optimisation.

The concept of detailed speed profiles is not new in itself. In the UK, speed data has been captured and aggregated for some years by ITIS, and is available from organisations such as MapMechanics with map data from Navteq, Tele Atlas's main rival.