slides : https://www.snap4city.org/download/video/Snap4City_OPTIFaaS_OsakaExpo_Pres.pdf

OPTIFaaS is a solution implemented on top of Snap4City Smart City Digital Twin platform that provide tools for the operation management and the tactic and strategic plan for urban mobility and transport.

The solution exploit urban digital twins empowered by several data analytics based on Artificial Intelligence. Multiple mobility and transport applications are supported like

• Traffic management and optimisation,
• public transport optimisation,
• sharing and pooling management,
• parking management,
• traffic light planning and optimisation.

With Snap4City/OPTIFaaS is possible to:

• Perform analyses
• Compute indicators,
• Compute predictions and perform optimization and what-if analysis assessing the impact of possible changes,
• carry out optimizations to automatically identify the most effective solutions.

Five are the main objectives:

• Reduce traffic congestion in the urban network, thus decreasing travel times, stop times, and pollutant emissions
• Increase road safety, by real-time monitoring to identify critical situations, and by planning to provide safer environment to vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists
• Augment accessibility to mobility and transport services to respond to the specific needs for small and medium administrations
• Reduce costs of control room deployment thanks to opensource software, and for urban planning activities by exploiting AI tools
• Finally, foster the urban decarbonization, by suggesting more sustainable solutions of mobility and transport

To achieve such objectives, we employ digital twin and AI technologies.

Digital twins are digital entities aligned to physical entities, in this case the urban environment, integrating tools for monitoring and simulations to support experts in evaluating the current status and the impacts of possible changes.

Real data are fundamental to build a high-fidelity replica of the cities that evolves over time. Acquired information includes measurements from IoT sensors, open data, geographic information, satellite images, messages from on-board unit, data from telecom operators, and many others. By modelling and fusing all the information, the digital twin accurately describes the real environment and can be exploited to evaluate plans and urban development strategies.

Using dashboards and Graphical User Interfaces, information is made immediately available to operator and decision-maker that can assess the current status of the urban mobility, compute key performance indicators, perform tactic and strategic plans.

Data are exploited for AI  analytics, to perform what-if analysis on user defined scenarios, and for computing predictions, reconstructions, optimisations and simulations

In the context of mobility, the usage of digital twins empowered by AI analytics, as in Snap4City/OPTIFaaS, allow for example to

• monitor, predict and reconstruct road traffic,
• early warning on congestions and critical spots to allow operators to immediately activate efficient responses
• optimize the road infrastructure
• identify the best traffic light plans, to reduce congestion and prioritize specific travel solutions, for example public transports
• find the best travel solutions with dynamic and multimodal routing
• analyse citizen behaviours and their travel patterns, and identify the most visited areas

Snap4City platform can ingest, model and store any kind of data from any source and protocol.

The solution is open source, thus reducing deployment costs and avoiding technological lock-in that could negatively impact on the adoption of the solution, particularly from small and medium-sized cities.

Moreover, Snap4City in grounded on AI analytics. Users can easily exploit AI solutions without any programming competence by simply operating on the provided graphical interfaces.

Been based on a distributed and modular architecture exploiting microservices, the solution is easily scalable according to the city size and the complexity of the required analyses.

This is a key characteristic to provide solutions tailored on the needs of any city at a minimal cost. Small communities would be able to solve mobility problems exploiting advanced AI solutions.

OPTIFaaS support decision-makers and city operators in controlling and planning urban mobility. Advanced control rooms can be deployed with minimal setup costs, and complex analytics can be easily used.

To conclude, “Snap4City / OPTIFaaS promotes efficient and safe urban mobility, contributing to an improved quality of life and the sustainable growth of the community”

• Decreased traffic congestions, faster travel time
• reduced emissions
• improved and more efficient public transport
• safer road with less car accidents
• early warning and fast response

Snap4City/OPTIFaaS exploits the ultimate Artificial Intelligence tools to control in operation mobility and transport infrastructures and provide tools for  tactic and strategic planning with minimal cost and without requiring coding skills.