We’re very excited to be partnering with Vaisala, a global leader in weather, environmental, and industrial measurements, to drive sustainability in the travel industry.

Viva sensors, which use artificial intelligence and machine learning to capture anonymous traffic counts of different transport modes across a selected ‘count line’, will be paired with Vaisala’s weather and environmental measurement products to enhance safety, efficiency, and decision making. These state of the art sensors will provide detailed insights into both street level and large scale weather and air quality changes across the West Midlands region.

The pandemic has shone a light on air quality and travel sustainability, with the contributions from different vehicles changing significantly. For example, data from Ricardo revealed that passenger car contribution decreased to 53% and LGVs and HGVs together contributed just under a third of the total NO_x, during the lockdown periods in 2020.

Project with WM5G and Transport for West Midlands

Viva and Vaisala are currently working on a forward-looking project enabled by West Midlands 5G (WM5G) and Transport for West Midlands. Air quality and weather sensors are being installed across a number of sites alongside Viva Lab’s traffic sensors, to provide researchers with the opportunity to explore the subtle differences in traffic flows as the weather changes.

The next stage of the £5.8 million Road Sensor Network Project will see around 350 sensors – provided by Viva and Vaisala – deployed across the seven constituent authorities of the West Midlands Combined Authority area, before its conclusion in March 2022. It is hoped that the findings will support other regions in developing similar networks to ease congestion hotspots and manage traffic flow more intuitively.

Mark Nicholson, CEO and Co-Founder at Viva, commented:

“The conversation around air quality, sustainability and the impact of travel has become essential, and it’s great to be partnering with Vaisala to provide key and new data for local authorities and researchers. By providing these insights, decisions can be made about infrastructure and both immediate and longer term plans can be put in place to improve air quality.”

Danny Johns, Business Development Manager, Weather and Environment, at Vaisala added:

“Using weather and air quality data together with Viva’s traffic sensors provides valuable input to facilitate smoother traffic flows in the West Midlands region and demonstrates the power of the close collaboration between our two organisations. These various data sources help build a better understanding of the key relationship between the vehicles, the pollution they create, and the way that pollution either stays close to the ground or disperses depending on the prevailing weather conditions.”

About Vaisala

Vaisala is a global leader in weather, environmental, and industrial measurements. Building on 85 years of experience, Vaisala provides observations for a better world, with space-proof technology even exploring Mars and beyond. They are a reliable partner for customers around the world, offering a comprehensive range of innovative observation and measurement products and services. Headquartered in Finland, Vaisala employs over 1,900 professionals worldwide and is listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.

Get in touch with the Viva team to find out more about our traffic management and data solution and ask for a free demo.

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