One of the world’s leading design, engineering and project management consultancies, UK-based Atkins, has signed a global partnership agreement with Inrix, the connected car services and transportation analytics company, which will help drive data insight into transportation infrastructure projects.
The partnership will enable detailed traffic information from millions of miles of road to improve master planning, influence the design phase of transport modeling, and meet the demands of new intelligent mobility opportunities. It is predicted that the improved insights into the way people travel could help reduce congestion and improve air quality in cities. With predicted global infrastructure investment set to reach US$3.3tr annually across transportation, power, water and telecommunications systems, the need for using insight derived from a variety of data sources is critical for creating smart and future-proofed cities.
The agreement means Atkins’ engineers and project managers will have access to several Inrix products, including:
• XD Traffic, which delivers accurate real-time traffic information across five million miles (eight million kilometers) of road in over 47 countries;
• Roadway Analytics, which offers quick and easy access to in-depth roadway performance analysis and visualizations;
• Trips, which provides accurate insights to better understand the movement of people and the journeys they take.
Atkins has already been applying Inrix services on several projects: both in the UK, where real-time traffic flow data is being used to provide improved insight on travel times for large infrastructure projects: and in the USA, where Inrix data has been providing insight into the need for operational improvements on state highways in Colorado, and supporting Atkins to evaluate existing traffic conditions in several planning and environmental linkage (PEL) studies in the state.
“From new smart highways enabling connected and autonomous vehicles, to designing the latest masterplans, we are now able to provide a hybrid of our people’s expertise combined with the rich data insights from Inrix,” commented Lee Woodcock, Atkins’ global product director for intelligent mobility. “By fusing the two together, we provide a globally progressive offering into the intelligent mobility and infrastructure sector.”
Scott Sedlik, global public sector general manager at Inrix, added, “Atkins recognizes there is a growing need for tools to identify trends when planning, monitoring, assessing and communicating the performance of transportation networks. This partnership enables Atkins’s project teams to carry out ground breaking analysis that will not only improve urban mobility, but also help drive cost efficiencies for their clients.”
