Geotab, a global leader in IoT and connected transportation, today announced the launch of its new website, data.geotab.com. Aiming to empower organizations and municipalities in the development of smart cities, data.geotab.com grants public access to intelligent datasets which provide insights surrounding smart city planning, improved productivity for businesses and safer communities.

The enriched, aggregated data available on data.geotab.com leverages billions of data points collected daily from the over 1 million vehicles equipped with Geotab telematics devices. Datasets are categorized under urban infrastructure, location analytics and weather and are aggregated to preserve privacy. The datasets accessible on data.geotab.com can be leveraged to help improve city-wide efficiency, discover key infrastructure challenges and guide deployment of automated solutions for issues such as congestion, parking and poor road conditions.

In addition to capturing a vehicle’s GPS and accelerometer data, telematics also pulls information surrounding speed, seat belt usage, engine diagnostics and more from the vehicle’s computer. An example of the datasets available on data.geotab.com include:

Hazardous Driving Areas: This dataset helps identify hazardous areas for driving according to harsh braking and accident level events within a specific area. While communities may already be aware of the locations of significant road collisions, the hazardous driving areas dataset identifies locations that are also prone to near misses, resulting in the ability to prioritize and develop risk mitigation strategies.

Road Impediments: Collecting and combining vehicle movement and GPS data, this dataset aims to indicate locations of abnormalities on driving surfaces such as potholes, speed bumps and general surface issues. Examining a vehicle's up and down movements (z-axis), this dataset examines z-axis variations and location data to help identify potential road impediments.

Searching for Parking: Searching for parking not only causes frustration, but also contributes to traffic congestion and additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; this dataset identifies areas within a city where drivers experience difficulty in finding parking. Analysis of this data could assist with optimized route planning, help guide the development of additional parking spaces and signage and help to facilitate plans for new road infrastructure.

“Earlier this year, we became the first fleet telematics company to achieve one million connected commercial vehicles built on a single, open platform,” says Neil Cawse, CEO, Geotab. “Now, we’re proud to be the one of the first resources to provide actionable insights from our global sensor network to help empower businesses and contribute to a rich data ecosystem that will further innovate the world - one community at a time.”

Demonstrating how data.geotab.com’s datasets can be utilized, Geotab was recently engaged by the City of Columbus to integrate its Smart City dataset into their Smart Columbus Operating System (SCOS). Through this partnership, the City of Columbus will utilize data that is compiled through the SCOS and combined with data.geotab.com datasets to help improve city operations in an economical and sustainable manner.

“Communities around the world will be able to leverage the intelligent data from data.geotab.com to better understand patterns in transportation, traffic, road conditions and more which will help prioritize safety measures among their communities,“ said Mike Branch, Vice President of Data & Analytics, Geotab. “Each dataset, including weather, urban infrastructure or location analytics, will advance driver and road safety measures, ultimately paving the way for safer, more sustainable and advanced smart city development.”

Access and find further information on Geotab’s Intelligence and Smart City Datasets at https://data.geotab.com/.