Traffic congestion is a problem every city faces, but few can quantify it in real time. It's a problem NGIS has been working to solve for over a decade, and one that recently earned the team recognition from Google Maps. On a recent episode of Location Matters, NGIS' Director of Transport and Smart Cities, Oliver Looker, sat down to talk about that journey and TraceMark^TM Flow, the innovative transport management tool at its centre.

Google Maps Platform sat down with our Director of Transport and Smart Cities, Oliver Looker, and Dr. Evangelos Mitsakis, Research Director at CERTH (Greece's national research and technology center), to talk about how real-time road data is changing the way transport agencies plan and respond to congestion.

Every city generates vast amounts of traffic data. The challenge isn’t a lack of information; it’s having access to the right data, at the right scale and speed, to make better decisions.

Traditional traffic reporting has largely relied on average speed and travel time because that’s what sensor networks could reliably capture. The real challenge isn’t simply knowing how fast traffic is moving; it’s understanding how consistently, reliably and predictably the network is performing.

Every traffic intelligence vendor will tell you they offer city-wide coverage and real-time insights. Before a public sector team commits budget and years of institutional trust to a provider, here are five questions worth asking directly, and how TraceMark™ Flow answers each one.

Most traditional traffic monitoring platforms require cities to build the infrastructure first before they can generate meaningful insights: installing sensors, deploying cameras and connecting hardware. TraceMark™ Flow doesn't. Much of the data already exists. The opportunity is to turn that data into actionable intelligence that traffic operators, transport planners and other decision-makers can use today.