Hi there,
As you may aware the topic Traffic Information is one interesting part of our current PTV xServer 1.12 release. Today I want to give you a short wrap up regarding traffic information options within PTV Developer Components.
Traffic information (TI), some more details
TI are informing you about traffic jams or further obstructions of traffic. These messages can be used for displaying them on maps or within route calculations. No real news until here. But in our PTV Developer Components product portfolio we are offering TI splitted in two characteristics:
a) Based on historical information as a part of our so called traffic patterns
b) Current (dynamic) traffic information delivered through by “Dynamic Traffic Incident Messages”
And where are the differences? Let me give you a short overview in the following
Traffic information as part of traffic patterns
Using this kind of TI you’ll get a realistic view onto the average speed on a certain road at a certain time. Those traffics patterns are derived from measurements of thousands of vehicles, which drove the corresponding road in the past. Technically they are containing segment related several speed-values per road segment (one value per segment and time-slot).These TI are provided as static binary files and are continuously updated to asure the compatibility with the latest maps offered by PTV. They are enabling our Developer Component customers to offer a service for traffic hot spot avoidance or for example a best departure time calculation supported by further routing functions (routing only in conjunction with PTV xRoute Server).
Traffic patterns are available for the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Dynamic Traffic Incident Messages
The main difference to traffic patterns is that these TI are real-time traffic information provided via an automatic request to our internal TI-server. That means, the incidents are exact-to-the minute and allowing the consideration of short-term traffic problems. They are enabling our PTV xServer-customers to offer “route-around-the-jam” services or simply display current traffic problems on the map. (Pls. note: these features are currently not offered for the PTV MapServer). But as mentioned before: here we have real-time data, no historical data.
Dynamic Traffic Incident Messages are available for the following countries: Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France**, Belgium** and Netherlands**.
(** available by end of April 2011)
I´ll stop here. For sure there is lot of more interesting stuff regarding traffic information to talk and blog about. If you are interested in more information regarding this topic, don’t hesitate to contact your account manager, write to developer@ptv.de or leave a comment on this post for me directly.
Best regards
Sven Halfeld
