Big data analytics company Teralytics has partnered with sustainability solutions specialist South Pole Group, Telefonica Germany and the city of Nuremberg to find a smart data system for air pollution. The partners will collect data in order to identify the major air pollution hotspots using mobile data, seen as an accurate, scalable and cost effective method. Teralytics will help telecom operators like Telefonica Germany transform massive amounts of mobile signal data into useful insights about traffic and crowd mobility patterns on a real-time, nationwide scale. Customer data will remain fully protected during the process.
The data will be used to see, for example, how fast cars are traveling, which roads are most congested, or what mode of transportation are commuters using. Telefonica Germany will anonymize the data using a three-step process, removing any personally identifiable information in the data. Conclusions can only be made about larger groups of people, rather than individuals. By correlating the amount of mobile signal data with the corresponding traffic patterns, estimates about air pollution emissions are derived.
The first pilot project will take place in Nuremberg, with Telefonica Germany providing the anonymized mobile data, Teralytics transforming the data and the South Pole Group providing the analysis to calculate air pollution emissions. Data quality checks will be done using historical data for comparison. Using the results of this project, the city of Nuremberg will enact measures in the regions where air quality is worst. For example, the city council could substitute transportation options that have high emissions with options that produce lower emissions, or they could identify areas to expand bicycle lanes. By having better traffic data, cities like Nuremberg now have new ammunition in the fight against smog.
