DI-ANN EISNOR: Hello.
My name is Di-Ann Eisnor, and I'm the director
of growth for Waze.
For anyone who doesn't know, Waze
is the free crowdsource navigation and real time
traffic application.
Our goal is to save five minutes a day,
every day for our more than 50 million users around the world.
With so many Wazers driving around every day,
we have an unprecedented amount of traffic, speeds, routes,
incidents, enclosure.
Our cities though, are congested.
Our mobility solutions are expensive, and they're static.
We need solutions for now, an on demand world
at the speed of mobile that can adapt to our rapidly
changing mobility patterns.
So today I'm going to share a program that we recently
started to use all of the data we're
able to collect from those users around the world
as a way to improve mobility in our most congested cities.
We call this the Connected Citizens Program.
So we share publicly available data on incidents enclosures
and we feed that into the cities.
In exchange, we get their incidence enclosures.
So for us, it's critical that we're not
going to be the app sending people over the closed bridge,
and this is a very difficult problem to solve.
The premise is we can save not just individuals
five minutes a day, but look at the city as a whole.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-In Rio de Janerio, Brazil, traffic
is a very important issue.
We have almost 7 million people here going from A to B
to C to D. From the first phone call that we have,
two weeks later, we were there inside of Waze application
with API's, bringing to the operation center
every information that we agree to share.
-We have the channel, we have the data,
and we need to shorten the distance between the citizens
and the city hall.
-We 400,000 Wazers in Rio de Janeiro.
50,000 users every day.
It's like we have an army of public agents talking to us.
As many Wazers that we have, the more this number grows,
more efficient and more [INAUDIBLE]
this tool will work.
[END PLAYBACK]
DI-ANN EISNOR: So it's important to us
that we're looking at mobility patterns around the world
as we collaborate in the solution.
So you can see here, that we have a really pretty
good geographic spread.
More than 50 million users.
In Rio alone, which you just saw, we have more than 150,000
every day.
And they Connected Citizens Program is now live in 32
cities and DOT's.
So the data that we're sharing and receiving-- it's
usually the closures that are due to things
like construction, protests, marathons, parades,
and incidents-- like traffic itself and accident.
Also, what are the unusual things
that are happening on the road in real time?
Is there a drastic change in the speed
in which people are driving or the patterns
in which they're driving?
Hazard such as ice, flooding-- anything that's
needed to stay safe and informed on the road, that's
the information that we care about and we want to provide.
So the distribution is a key piece as well.
We need to make sure that this data gets
into the hands of as many people as possible.
So we use the app itself, the notifications, inbox,
closures right on the map, and the live map at our website.
We use social media.
We do have dedicated series of Twitter
feeds for many of the cities, and they are constantly
streaming anything unusual we can find
so that people are alerted.
Here's an example of a closure and an inbox.
It's marked on the map, and users will
be routed around the closure.
And more details about it and when it might finish
will be in your inbox.
We alert people in real time as changes occur,
and now importantly, the same data
is seen in traffic management centers around the world
so it can be used to solve those problems.
Here's an example from Guatemala of an unusual traffic event.
We're looking for major changes in the speed
and behavior in real time, not just small changes.
So if we find something where there's a drastic change,
we try to correlate it to a report
that we have inside of our application.
In this particular case, it's an accident.
You can see police there.
We want people to be able to understand what's happening
and why.
Here's another example from Obama's visit to San Francisco.
So on the live map, you can see the exchanging routes
throughout the day.
You can see user generated photos
that are coming in from our users, which
provide important context for cities but also
for broadcasters and Wazers.
And lastly, you'll see that there's
a lot of gratitude happening in social media.
So we feel like there's a real need
for this kind of information, and we
try our best to provide it.
From the city perspective, there are three tangible benefits.
One is on integrating the information because they
don't have access to a lot.
Communicating with their citizen base.
And then of course, analyzing that information
to see if there are important insights
they can take away and add into their urban planning.
So if we talk about the integration for a second--
we need to integrate the data into their current systems.
This is really key because they don't have a lot of visibility
right now except their road sensors or traffic cameras.
And due to cost restrictions-- these things are
very expensive-- they tend to be only on major roads
for cities who can afford them at all.
So this is a first look at extending for them, the what's
happening and where-- help me understand
what's going on in my city.
Second, they see this as a way to communicate
with their citizens.
And they spend a lot of money and time
trying to gather this information,
and they need new ways to let people know what's happening,
what they're doing.
So some examples here are the parade information
after the New England Patriots Super Bowl victory.
Due to weather, nobody knew until the last minute
what time it was going to be or what the exact route
was going to be.
So they came to us and made sure that they
were able to communicate to all of our users
in Boston what the details were and keep people updated.
Latvia is another good example.
They have very strict rules on snow tires,
and they will start fining people the day
after the rules say that they need to have them on.
So we were able to send a message to all of our Wazers
to make sure that they were able to know exactly when they
needed to have these tires put.
Latvia was very happy about this.
NYPD is another partner.
And recently they changed the speed limit
across the entire city and needed a way
to reinforce and let New Yorkers know.
So they were able to use Waze for that as well.
This is an example of a variable message sign.
These things cost a lot of money, and many of them
are just sitting there empty and blank
because the data sources have been too expensive
or it's been too difficult to integrate.
So we're now providing these cities
with travel times in real time, as well as alerts.
For example, snow and ice.
And then thirdly, analysis has been key for our partners.
Once they have this much data, they
need to understand the meaning of it.
And so this is an example from the Brazilian elections in Rio
last year.
They had two, and the first is what you're seeing here.
This is Waze reports before and then during the election.
So you can see that the number of reports grew by 103%
just in that one day.
What you're seeing on the right-hand side
is every single neighborhood in Rio.
The ones in red are an increase in reports,
and the ones in blue are a decrease.
So they were able to-- for the second election--
make sure that they redistributed traffic personnel
in a way that made sense based on really
what people were experiencing on the roads.
So this was a very nice example of making an improvement based
on this analysis.
So on average, Waze users report an accident
30 seconds after they occur.
This is significantly lower than what people normally
see from having to call in or even from sensors.
Even in Sydney where we don't have a huge user base,
we're contributing an additional 30% of new incidents
to their traffic management center.
And 47% are coming in through Waze
before any other mechanisms.
We also have cities that are optimizing their traffic camera
placement based on where accidents are happening
or where congestion is happening on a changing basis.
So, some other really interesting ways
that people are looking at improving their cities based
on data is, Boston Wazers are reporting an average
of 900 potholes a month.
And they are committed to fixing them as a city.
So this is good.
You know, it's one thing to report.
And it's another thing to know that you're going to report
and something will be fixed.
Washington DC just outdid Boston with what
they called Potholepalooza.
And so for one week, anyone who added a pothole through Waze
saw that it was fixed within 48 hours.
This is great government response.
We have live snow plow and garbage truck feeds.
So Rio has even changed their garbage collection routes
based on this data.
And the Kentucky DOT is letting users
know when the roads have been cleared in real time
so they know when they can get on the road.
LA is also taking it up a notch in trying to soften
their peak commute times.
And it can be a difference on a commute
in LA in the morning between 30 minutes in two hours.
So they're trying to incentivize best times to leave
for work using Waze data.
If you leave 10 minutes earlier or later
you might save 30 minutes in the long run.
And so we can now surface this information.
So citizens are reporting, and cities are listening.
We're playing an active role in trying to turn data
into better mobility.
And the underlying theme we've been talking about here
is really that governments have access to more data
than ever before, citizens are open to sharing and reporting,
but citizens expect action.
Cities have an obligation now to respond,
and the most successful local governments are already
using data to take action and improve mobility
based on citizen communication and insights,
literally taking all this data and using it
as intelligent infrastructure.
So, if you're a developer or a planner for a city or a DOT,
please join mobility leaders from around the world
to share best practices and crowdsourcing,
data analysis, real time response to citizen needs,
and help spread the word.
Get your cities involved.
Thank you so much.
[MUSIC PLAYING]