The municipal company OICT will start testing advanced video analysis of traffic flow in Prague. Thanks to this, in the future, the capital city will obtain traffic-analytical data for decisions about territorial development, changes in traffic signs or modification of signal plans or construction modifications. At the beginning of the week, Prague City Council approved a contract for the provision of services for testing technology for obtaining statistical traffic data.
"The number of cars in Prague is constantly growing. Our task is therefore to come up with solutions that ensure the smoothest possible passage through the city. For this, it is necessary not only to invest intensively in transport infrastructure, but also to manage transport based on data, and not on impressions. In addition, the data will be published on the city's data platform Golemio and the website pragozor.cz, where it is already possible to find online traffic statistics from other sources," says the Mayor of Prague, Zdeněk Hřib.
The goal of the pilot project is to test the reliability and quality of traffic-analytical technology for the continuous acquisition of anonymized important traffic data, which will be the most suitable for use in Prague. Thanks to this, inappropriate selection of technology without prior verification shall be avoided.
The obtained anonymized data will be transferred in real time and without human assistance to the Prague OICT Golemio data platform, where it will be gradually processed and made available as a data layer to serve subsequently as a basis for further planning and effective decision-making. "We will examine seven traffic parameters, verify their reliability and the possibilities of using their anonymized data, so that we can make them available as conveniently as possible. We want to use one technology to simultaneously monitor the composition of the traffic flow divided into various categories such as passenger cars and trucks, buses or single-track vehicles, traffic intensity, models of means of transport, speed, driving directions, traffic jams and dangerous situations, for example collisions in traffic," explains the CEO of OICT, Tomáš Barczi.
Municipal districts deal with traffic problems, which typically include overcrowding of detour routes, dangerous pedestrian crossings, crowded intersections, traffic jams, violations of no entry for trucks or the no left/right turn. With this in mind, the OICT company, in cooperation with the Department of Transport Administration and the Prague-based company Road Network Technical Management (Technická správa komunikací), has selected 10 locations of interest, including 1 roundabout, a road profile without a pedestrian crossing, a road profile including a pedestrian crossing, several types of construction layout of intersections and such road profiles on which the trajectory of vehicles will be monitored. The pilot locations were also selected in cooperation with the Municipal Districts of Prague 11 and Prague 6 in such a way as to represent the basic types of construction layout of road traffic that occur in the city.
The project supports the fulfilment of the goals of the Adaptation Strategy of the capital city of Prague on climate change, namely, the specific goal of improving Prague's conditions in the area of sustainable mobility and belongs to the thematic framework of the Territorial Analytical Documents in the area of transport infrastructure. The project is also part of the implementation of the Smart Prague concept by 2030.