Vizzion provides PDC with traffic cameras to integrate into their DisasterAWARE platform
The Pacific Disaster Center — an applied science, technology, and research center managed by the University of Hawaii — has recently renewed their partnership with Vizzion. The agreement is a continuation of the successful partnership between Vizzion and PDC to offer traffic camera feeds through PDC’s DisasterAWARE platform, the most powerful and reliable early warning and multi-hazard monitoring system on the market. Designed to help disaster management practitioners make informed decisions and to provide situational awareness, DisasterAWARE features a wide array of tools and visualized information about weather patterns, active hazards, infrastructure locations, and population densities. The platform supports users through all phases of disaster management, from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery. Traffic cameras provide hyper-local insight into current roadway conditions and how they are affected by extreme weather events and other hazards. This allows decision-makers to protect people and infrastructure in the affected areas, especially during conditions in which it is unsafe for them to physically reach the location.
PDC’s Global Operations Response Lead, Michael Chatman, explained how traffic cameras support the operational needs of disaster managers leading up to, during, and following major hazard events. “Vizzion’s traffic camera technology helps PDC and our customers achieve more comprehensive situational awareness for routine monitoring as well as life-saving disaster response operations. The footage offered by Vizzion has been integrated into our software, DisasterAWARE, and provides disaster management and emergency response personnel with critical information about road traffic, contraflow, and ground conditions during all phases of response. This information shapes evacuation plans, public outreach about unsafe areas, and is a vital tool we can’t live without.”
PDC uses Vizzion’s API to integrate 47,000 traffic cameras from across North America and Europe into their DisasterAWARE platform. Vizzion’s API allows users to retrieve camera data by region, bounding box, route, and other designations, and works as a powerful framework to display images and video streams directly in a variety of applications.
“Disaster management can be a literal life-and-death situation, so being able to rely on the data presented to you is crucial,” says Sean Beaudoin, Account Manager at Vizzion. “I’m proud to be able to say that PDC is using our camera imagery to help save lives. It’s a testament to both the efficacy of DisasterAWARE and the reliability of Vizzion’s camera service that we’ve had such a successful partnership.” Through proprietary in-house image analysis algorithms, Vizzion is able to test each image before delivery to the end user, filtering out error messages, stalled image feeds, and camera failures to ensure that images accessed through the Web Service will be an accurate assessment of the ground-truth.
About PDC
For more than 20 years, Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) has supported the most demanding government customers and nonprofits worldwide, sharing in the mission to save lives and reduce disaster risk. As an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaii, we are continuously developing new technologies and best practices to help our many global partners effectively mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. We work side by side with government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and humanitarian relief organizations to conduct baseline risk and national disaster preparedness assessments, create mitigation strategies, support training and exercises, and to implement our powerful DisasterAWARE® technology. DisasterAWARE provides global risk intelligence, early warning, and largest collection of global, scientifically verified geospatial data and modeling tools for assessing risk and hazard impacts. Following the devastating effects of Hurricane Iniki to the Hawaiian Islands in 1992, Pacific Disaster Center was conceived as a center to improve systems of communication and technology for disaster prevention at home and beyond. PDC now serves a global audience, helping to increase disaster management capacity and embolden more effective decisions, policies, and actions for a safer world.
About Vizzion
Vizzion is the leading provider of road imagery for traffic, weather, road condition, and safety operations and applications. Through partnerships with over 200 different transport agencies and on-vehicle camera providers, Vizzion offers live feeds from over 100,000 cameras in 40 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and key markets in South America and Africa. Both on-vehicle and roadside traffic camera services are available through Vizzion’s flexible API and turnkey Video Wall application. Vizzion’s content is trusted by major apps, map providers, broadcasters, fleets, and automotive organizations. Contact [email protected] for more information.
Articles
Traffic Cameras: Providing the Whole Picture
Governments around the world spend millions of dollars on implementing and maintaining these traffic cameras because they know that the cameras can help mitigate traffic jams and even save lives.
Vizzion Can Detect Areas of Low-Visibility through Image Analysis
Vizzion’s Low Visibility Detection Service scans its network of traffic cameras to detect unsafe driving conditions. The service outputs georeferenced polygons outlining locations of low visibility for use in traffic management centers and mobility apps.
Vizzion Uses Image Analysis to Enhance Data Accuracy and Detect Low-Visibility Conditions
Vizzion's image analysis algorithms create a better end-user experience for its customers by detecting and automatically removing bad images, enhancing impaired images, detecting viewpoints, and other features.
Applications
Microsoft has selected Vizzion for worldwide traffic camera imagery in Windows 10 and Bing Maps. This feature complements existing traffic flow data and incident data, and allows users to visualize up-to-the-minute road conditions.
The Traffic Operations Center at HERE Technologies uses Vizzion's Desktop Video Wall to locate and report on real-time traffic incident information around the world.