VIMOC Technologies Releases New Smart City Application for Bicycle and Pedestrian Traffic Management Benefiting Public Safety, Sustainability

AUSTIN, Texas, June 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 2016 Smart Cities Innovation Summit in Austin, Texas, VIMOC Technologies announced general availability of its flagship application for bicycle and pedestrian counting.  The solution has completed its beta trial period with the City of Palo Alto, Calif., and the application is now generally available to cities seeking intelligence on bicycle and pedestrian traffic to help meet public safety and environmental sustainability goals. The 2016 Smart Cities Innovation Summit includes representatives from more than 200 cities to discuss innovative technology and connect cities with state-of-the-art solutions and best practices.  VIMOC will demo its Smart City Application Platform at booth 509.

Earlier this month, the City of Palo Alto announced it had expanded its bicycle and pedestrian counting initiative which will help measure the efficacy of the City's programs that encourage citizens to reduce personal automobile usage. Utilizing VIMOC Technologies' platform for landscape computing and the Internet of Things, Palo Alto has strategically deployed sensors throughout the city, concentrating heavily in downtown Palo Alto and around school sites.

The City of Palo Alto leveraged a U.S. Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School grant, designed to reduce risks to students and encourage more families to walk and bike or use other alternatives to driving more often.  The program enables the City to evaluate the existing conditions for students traveling to school, assess current education programs, develop new encouragement tools, and explore policy changes to improve school commute safety. 

The expanded program adds 45 count stations across the City. Sensors do not collect images or any other personally identifiable information. Sophisticated algorithms can translate movement into data that is amorphous and yet predictive.  Data is processed in the field and the post-processed results are sent to the cloud so that it can be accessed in real-time and used to identify trends and make decisions.

On May 12, VIMOC's application was able to document and benchmark a 20% increase in ridership from week to week due to increased awareness and the City's marketing of Bay Area Bike to Work Day.

Said Dr. Jonathan Reichental, Chief Information Officer for the City of Palo Alto, "These sensors and the data they collect provide an unprecedented view of city activity. While making sure to protect the privacy of people, this data has the potential to assist with city planning efforts and to inform a wide range of future decisions."

According to The League of American Bicyclists from 2002-2013 bicycle commuting rates in cycling-friendly communities increased by 105%, far exceeding the average national growth rate of 62%.  Smart City solutions that use data to improve routes and sustainability policy will help cities respond to this trend.

"Many cities have launched programs to encourage residents to embrace cycling as an alternative for commuting to work and school.  But, with limited data or no data at all, these cities struggle to understand if these programs have been successful," said Tarik Hammadou, CEO and Co-Founder of VIMOC Technologies.  "VIMOC enables cities to understand pedestrian and cycling traffic patterns and identify successes and areas of improvement."

VIMOC's distributed computing platform extends cloud computing near the edge of the network, offering high-scalability, security and cost-effective management of smart infrastructure services. VIMOC calls this Landscape Computing. Data is collected and processed through a neural mesh network of sensors across a city or campus through nBoxes, an intelligent computing and analytics node. By migrating intelligence closer to the edge of the network, the very environment in which we live becomes the computer.

The VIMOC platform currently supports a set of other advanced applications for urban planning and smart city analytics including parking, traffic flow and water and wastewater management.

About VIMOC Technologies
VIMOC Technologies, Inc. has developed the world's first open platform for the Understanding of Things (UoT) that enables citizens, businesses and cities to gather knowledge and learn so that we might better understand how to manage and optimize the way by which we work and live.  The Internet of Things is about connecting the world; VIMOC's landscape computing network is about understanding it.  By extending cloud computing to the edge of the network, cities, businesses, communities and enterprises can gather intelligence to better manage resources and create operational efficiency. www.vimoctechnologies.com

SOURCE VIMOC Technologies, Inc.

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