 Having pioneered the supply of computer-based road maps with real-world road speed data attached to them, MapMechanics has now taken the concept a significant stage forward.
The new release of the company’s GB Speeds and GB Speeds PLUS data provides road speed data that can be linked to detailed vector (layered) mapping with far more attribute features attached to it. It can also take advantage of legal speed limit information now contained in the map data.
This means businesses using the data for applications such as vehicle scheduling, network planning and catchment analysis can consider a far wider range of practical factors – anything from the number of lanes on a given stretch of road to features such as address ranges, turning restrictions, points of interest and the surrounding geography.
Using mapping with any or all these features, users can consider typical real-world road speeds for three main parts of the day (peak, rush-hour and night time), as well as for two different types of vehicle type (large goods vehicles and cars and smaller goods vehicles).
The new datasets result from MapMechanics’ work in aligning two key data sources. One is NAVTEQ digital mapping, which is derived from true driven journeys and is constantly updated. The other is ITIS road speed data, which is derived by MapMechanics from literally billions of ITIS GPS-based “plots” taken from a pool of over 50,000 vehicles in daily use throughout the country.
Simultaneously with the extension in the availability of road speed data, NAVTEQ map data itself has now been enhanced to include legal speed limits on many roads. As a result, MapMechanics’ GB Speeds data offers users even more opportunity to perform a variety of vehicle speed analysis activities.
For instance, vehicle operators can compare the actual road speeds recorded by their own trucks with typical roads speeds for the roads travelled, or with legal speed limits for those stretches of road.
MapMechanics managing director, Mary Short, points out: “With the growing emphasis on safe driving and responsible, ‘green’ driving techniques, vehicle operators are increasingly interested in monitoring driving performance, and promoting good practice and fuel-saving driving style in their fleets. The combination of road speed information that we can now provide with our mapping is invaluable for this kind of activity.”
She adds: “Against a background of increasingly tight limits on driving time, it is also important for operators to know the true speeds their vehicles can achieve on given journeys, so that their software can plan realistic and achievable schedules that draw optimum efficiency from their vehicle movements.”
MapMechanics already plays a major role in collating and packaging the raw ITIS road speed data, and linking it to relevant road network data. The company has been instrumental in popularising this data and making it widely available to other organisations involved in digital mapping and business and geographic analysis.
Previously the road speed data was available only with NAVTEQ Base street mapping. Now MapMechanics offers ITIS data with all three main versions of the NAVTEQ product – NAVTEQ Base, NAVTEQ Standard and NAVTEQ Premium.
The Standard version adds address ranges and numerous points of interest to the data, while the Premium edition includes cartographic features and contours. Users can now select whichever level of mapping is most suitable to their projects, and can obtain ITIS road speed data with all of them.
NAVTEQ’s legal speed limit data is being rolled out for a variety of countries in addition to Britain – not just in Europe, but also in more distant places such as South Africa and United Arab Emirates.
MapMechanics adds value to this speed limit data, converting it from the road types specified in the source NAVTEQ data to more familiar classifications such as “A” roads and “B” roads.
Already it is available for most main roads in Britain, and during 2008 it will be extended to more and more other roads.
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