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AI traffic analytics startup Greenroads eyes safer urban mobility 

Team members of Greenroads, the City of Ghent, and EIT Urban Mobility testing the innovation
Team members of Greenroads, the City of Ghent, and EIT Urban Mobility testing the innovation

How can cities make roads safer while balancing the needs and interests of all users? Greenroads, a tech startup from Malta, has successfully deployed an innovative computer vision and data analytics solution to help the Belgian city of Ghent find answers to this complex challenge. With safer roads, the goal is that more citizens can feel confident in adopting active and sustainable modes of transport. 

In order to pilot their solution, Greenroads teamed up with the Belgian city as part of a recent EIT Urban Mobility-supported project. Xan Albrecht, Traffic Researcher for City of Ghent explained, “We have some preliminary results and that’s already a huge accomplishment.”  

Using AI computer vision to process drone footage of a busy junction in the city, Greenroads was able to metabolise a vast amount of data to show precisely how different road users moved through the space. With this data, the startup produced visualisations, including aerial heat maps, and other features readily available on a dashboard.  

“The data is visualised in a way that shows them the issues straight away. It was really nice to see their reactions and how pleased they were when they saw the actual results and the visualisations,” Greenroads’ CEO Claire Ciancio recalled. 

“If you want to plot something like that on a map manually, it is really labour-intensive. Knowing that we can get such extensive data basically on the fly from a software solution, that’s really exciting,” Albrecht highlighted.  

These analytics offer invaluable, actionable insights that can be used to make evidence-based decisions for safer road infrastructure. The data can help decision-makers answer questions like where to place cycle lanes, bus stops or pedestrian crossings in order to make traffic flow smoothly, reduce accidents and eliminate fatalities. Crucially, the recorded drone video is also GDPR compliant, having been captured at a high altitude above the crossing. 

Innovative partnership 

The logistics of gathering traffic data can be daunting: from teams potentially needing to collect data on-site, to processing video footage, the work can be expensive and time-consuming. Yet at the same time, such data can make a real-world difference when it comes to designing safer road infrastructure. All of these hurdles and possibilities make such data a precious resource for traffic researchers and urban planners, among others.  

“EIT Urban Mobility’s Rapid Applications for Transport (RAPTOR) Open Call gave us an incentive to look for a startup that could do automated video analysis of our images,” Albrecht explained. “EIT Urban Mobility facilitated matchmaking between the startup and our needs and vision,” he added. 

Xan Albrecht presenting at an event for the City of Ghent

RAPTOR is a competition for startups and SMEs to find the most innovative, impactful and feasible solutions for niche urban mobility challenges within an accelerated time frame. For the Greenroads team, the introduction to Ghent that EIT Urban Mobility enabled through the RAPTOR programme was a valuable opportunity to develop and improve its technology. 

“RAPTOR helped by informing us about the challenge that the City of Ghent was facing and EIT Urban Mobility facilitated the introductions and the interactions that we needed in order to obtain this client,” Ciancio underlined. “It was also an opportunity to adapt our software to study even more complex junctions with drone footage, whereas before we were using fixed cameras.”  

Albrecht picked “the most complex” junction in the city he could think of in order to “stress test” Greenroads’ model. With nearly 30 different pathways it would have been expensive and time-consuming to study the area in such detail using more manual solutions. It is also a junction that’s expected to undergo a redesign, so the pilot project with Greenroads came at an opportune moment for analysis and greater understanding.  

Inspiring results 

“If you have a junction with 2,500 cars and 700 to 800 cyclists in one hour, then you just know that freeing up this intersection and lowering the traffic intensities will have a beneficial effect,” Albrecht noted. “I was just hoping that Greenroads would tailor an existing model, train it better for the drone footage, and that’s actually exactly what happened.” 

“The AI doesn’t get tired,” Greenroads’ CTO Johan Zammit pointed out, “So in terms of data collection, more data can be collected and can be connected in ways that were impossible before.” The bonus? No need to install infrastructure like cameras on site.  

Using AI alongside the drone technology also gave the city the ability to study the junction as a whole, within a short timeframe, while also including pedestrians in the data. “If you are working with data only about cars, then you’re designing cities which are just for cars,” Ciancio explained.  

The partnership between the startup and city quickly made a mark. Staff at the City of Ghent requested to look at the visualisations for their design work, and some 30 “real mobility nerds” from the department gathered for a “really inspiring” session on the pilot’s results. “That just shows me how useful this study can be,” Albrecht stressed.   

Both Greenroads and the City of Ghent believe this innovative procedure of applying computer vision technology to footage from an off-the-shelf drone has potential for other towns, including those that need affordable ways to research road safety improvements. “If you compare it to hiring people for studies, then it’s definitely something that will make this accessible even to smaller communities with smaller budgets,” Albrecht noted. 

“I think, at least from a citizen point of view, knowing that the city is taking into consideration the quality of life, the quality of the commutes and the safety of all involved — not just vehicles — it gives reassurance that you can make that sustainability shift,” Ciancio said.