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For cities aspiring to climate-neutrality, understanding and managing their traffic emissions is a key hurdle. Cleantech startup GaiaHub is solving this challenge with its advanced license plate recognition technology and data analytics, helping make real-time emissions monitoring and control a reality.
“We’re already seeing insights from this data,” shared GaiaHub Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Olena Chornovol, fresh from an EIT Urban Mobility-supported pilot project in Latvia’s third largest city of Liepāja.
“For example, we can see which group of vehicles are having the most impact on the environment. So, this data can already bring a lot of insight for citizens and for the city government to develop their activities or policies,” Chornovol highlighted.
The pilot project saw smart cameras installed at two intersections in the city where traffic flows in and out of the Low Emissions Zone. Here, the cameras use computer vision license plate recognition to see what sort of vehicles are on the road and calculate their emissions. GaiaHub’s solution is able to do this accurately by matching the licence plates with data in the Latvian National Car Registry, including fuel type and type of vehicle.
“With this GaiaHub approach we see the data in real-time. So, we know how many electric cars are crossing some points, some streets, some bridges. After that we can see what the trend is and what will be the scenarios for the future,” Kārlis Beihmanis from the Executive Director’s Office of Liepāja City Council explained.
Streamlining sustainability with tracking solutions
The city of Liepāja has seen an increase of private vehicles on the road each year, driving emissions that are counter to the city’s desire for sustainable solutions. With a population of around 70,000, there are now an estimated 27,000 cars, so managing these vehicle emissions in an efficient, scientific way is essential.
GaiaHub’s solution meets the city’s need to update how it collects traffic emissions data. The existing system involves a time-consuming process in which authorities make data requests to fuel stations, and the data is then sent on to experts who produce emissions data, before it is finally transformed into visualisations for decision-makers. By streamlining the whole process, GaiaHub enhances the city’s ability to accurately monitor and precisely control emissions.
To make the calculations on vehicle emissions even more accurate, GaiaHub’s platform considers additional vehicle data, including speed and acceleration. “We can compute precise information on specific areas and specific cars generating different types of emissions, not only CO2, but also CO or NO, et cetera. So, in this way, we are helping to automate the data collection and also to improve the methodology,” Chornovol pointed out.
All of this, and more, is then fed into an administrative portal that the city council can monitor and generate reports from. The system fully complies with GDPR requirements, does not store video footage, and encrypts all data at the point it is collected.
The valuable insights from GaiaHub do more than contribute to the development of targeted emissions policies — they engage citizens in a powerful way. A landing page functions as an open data source and an educational tool, for example, all designed to spark public awareness and interest on traffic emissions in the city. The raw data is also brought to life through easy-to-grasp visualisations, bringing a complex concept into an accessible format.
Opening doors to new opportunities
“EIT Urban Mobility has given us a really great chance and an opportunity to move closer to our climate targets,” Beihmanis shared. The successful cooperation between GaiaHub and Liepāja was formed thanks to EIT Urban Mobility’s RAPTOR Programme 2024. RAPTOR acts as a matchmaker between innovative startups and cities facing urban mobility issues, with a mission to speed up the shift to sustainable urban mobility through these unique city-startup partnerships.
“It has given us a lot of experience on managing projects, reaching our connections and networking, and provided more opportunities to work with other cities,” GaiaHub Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Chahinez Ounoughi underlined.
“EIT Urban Mobility created a great collaborative environment. We joined a great community of professionals that helped us to connect all the parties that are involved in the delivery process, to avoid any communication issues or to streamline the processes in order to solve the challenges every startup faces,” Chornovol added.
The startup’s long-term goal is to design the tools that contribute to efficient transportation management systems, while at the same time advancing public awareness on emissions. With its highly scalable and versatile solution, CEO Chornovol aspires to see GaiaHub installed in more cities. “In the future, we see that we would need to build a sort of a digital twin or simulation playground where we could simulate the transport flows based on the real-time data,” she explained. “Such a simulation instrument could help to see the future, without a significant cost.”
