{"id":2922,"date":"2019-06-21T16:22:57","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T14:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/?p=2922"},"modified":"2019-06-21T16:22:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T14:22:57","slug":"2922","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/2019\/06\/21\/2922\/","title":{"rendered":"In These Cities, Fleet Vehicles Are Roaming Data Centers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Telematics<\/p>\n

Telematics providers are working with government fleets to collect and report \u2018beyond-the-vehicle\u2019 data that informs decisions relating to operations, customer service, and public works. Image: Getty ImagesFleet vehicles equipped with air-quality monitoring \u201chats\u201d roam the streets of Houston as part of a collaboration between the city\u2019s health department and the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.<\/i><\/p>\n

In These Cities, Fleet Vehicles Are Roaming Data Centers<\/span><\/h3>\n

Houston is serious about air quality. Officials monitor a list of 20 parameters from eight (soon to be nine) continuous air monitoring sites several miles apart and operate \u201cMAAML,\u201d for \u201cmobile ambient air monitoring laboratory,\u201d a modified Ford E-Series camper filled with instruments and sensors that can be dispatched to hot spots.<\/p>\n

Last year, the city accepted an invitation from the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), working in partnership with telematics provider Geotab, to attach air-quality monitors<\/a> to two fleet vehicles. Affixed with magnets, the \u201chats\u201d use antenna-style intakes and optical particle counters to measure levels of black carbon and PM2.5, a form of particulate matter, wherever and whenever the vehicles are in use.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther cities have monitored their air quality with specialized vehicles carrying specialized instruments. Houston is the first city that has monitored pollution using their own, regular vehicles doing their regular job,\u201d said Aileen Nowlan, a senior manager focusing on smart cities innovation at EDF.<\/p>\n

Those two cars, both driven by Houston Health Department (HHD) investigators, could only be expected to travel a fraction of Houston\u2019s roads and highways. But they did find a few hot spots. And Nowlan said that, by equipping 30 vehicles with air-quality hats, 30% of the city could be covered in just six months, and smaller communities could do even more with far less. \u201cPeople assume you\u2019d have to put monitors on all the vehicles or thousands of vehicles. With telematics, you\u2019re able to pick the best vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Houston\/EDF project is just one example of a new trend in connected-\u00advehicle technology: leveraging the miles traveled by city-owned vehicles to collect and report data the city can use to identify and redress problems not necessarily related to fleet \u2014 all while optimizing fleet operations.<\/p>\n

\"Fleet<\/p>\n

Fleet vehicles equipped with air-quality monitoring \u201chats\u201d roam the streets of Houston as part of a collaboration between the city\u2019s health department and the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. Photo courtesy of City of Houston<\/em><\/p>\n

Houston, We Have a Solution<\/h3>\n

Naomi Macias of the Houston Health Department said her office was proud to be part of the experiment. And it paid off with an entirely new level of insight into vehicle performance and driver safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin our first two, three months on the system, our lead vehicle liaison said, \u2018You would not believe this reporting,\u2019\u201d said Macias, who serves as bureau chief for HHD\u2019s consumer health division. \u201cThe biggest thing we gained was the safety aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, RoadBotics and Elgin Sweeper Co. partnered to launch an ambitious project<\/a> in the State of Florida: Municipal-owned Elgin street sweepers were equipped with windshield-mounted smartphones loaded with RoadBotics\u2019 RoadSense app. The app uses machine learning to identify potholes, cracks, and other hazards, building a map of road damage with no input from the driver.<\/p>\n

Last fall, Montgomery, Ala., Director of Public Works Chris Conway and Director of Fleet Management Walt Lilley connected with Rubicon Global and its SmartCity waste and recycling solutions platform. They outfitted 80 sanitation department vehicles with a smartphone loaded with Rubicon\u2019s hauler-specific app and a telematics \u201cpod\u201d capable of communicating with headquarters and each other.<\/p>\n

Lilley said he was hopeful adding telematics would improve driver safety and vehicle health, opting for catastrophic-level vehicle health alerts. \u201cI can\u2019t even count the number of saves. I really don\u2019t know. But our lot is a lot fuller every morning, because when we get notifications and contact sanitation leadership, they tell the drivers to bring them in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The new technology also improved customer service, Conway added, but why stop there?<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the very beginning, we said, \u2018Look, we\u2019ve got north of 1,000 miles of streets here, and we\u2019re driving them two or three times a week. What else could we collect?\u2019\u201d Conway said. \u201cSo our drivers have the ability to input certain items like potholes, property maintenance issues, graffiti \u2014 anything we might be relying on an inspector to canvas.\u201d<\/p>\n

If a driver spots an overgrown front lawn, for example, he or she can pick up the phone, snap a photo, and select one of up to 10 customizable \u201cexceptions\u201d listed in a pop-up menu. The location is tagged automatically, and the alert is routed to the city\u2019s 311 system.<\/p>\n

\u201cRubicon coined the phrase \u2018roaming data center,\u2019 and we bought into that concept,\u201d Conway said. \u201cObviously your primary mission is waste and sanitation. We\u2019re not going to turn you into an inspector. We\u2019re just saying that, if you see it, you can tag it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sanitation
Sanitation workers in the City of Montgomery, Ala., can use a smartphone to photograph and tag road hazards, code violations, and missed pickups thanks to new connected-vehicle technology. Photo courtesy of City of Montgomery<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stop Spinning Steel<\/h3>\n

Also onboard with the SmartCity pilot was the City of West Memphis, Ark., where Amanda Hicks serves as city engineer. She had been on the job for about a year when the partnership was proposed last fall, and she had crunched enough numbers to know her city\u2019s sanitation department had room to improve.<\/p>\n

West Memphis was far behind similar-size cities in waste tons per route, pickups per hour, and stops per route. So in addition to driver safety and vehicle health, Hicks said she told Rubicon she wanted to track performance-based metrics: how many times each \u201ctipper\u201d empties a can, pickups per hour, and time spent idling. The system also tracks landfill diversion rates by logging and tagging each weigh station visit.<\/p>\n

And like Conway and Lilley in Montgomery, Hicks has discovered the system benefits customer service as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the resident\u2019s can is filled with water, their dog is loose, or the gate to the dumpster is locked, they don\u2019t even have to call dispatch. Take a picture with the phone. It\u2019s tagged to that address. It takes a lot of the guesswork out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanitation workers have tough jobs and aren\u2019t often recognized, Hicks said, but they do draw their share of complaints. Empowering them to resolve those complaints \u2014 and lodge their own \u2014 must inevitably improve their working lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives them a little pride in their work. \u2018I saw that pothole and I reported it.\u2019 Sanitation can become a culture where, even though you want to take pride in your city, it\u2019s hard to get motivated to go over and above. I think sometimes we have to change the culture and take back the pride,\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n

\n

What Is Fleet?<\/h3>\n

Amy Ford is all for the advancement of telematics technology in pursuit of safer, smarter cities. In April, the former chief of advanced mobility for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) joined the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Intelligent Transportation Society of America, where she serves as director of the Mobility on Demand Alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s defined as a government fleet is changing,\u201d Ford said. \u201cYou used to have a fleet and a transit system. Now Uber and Lyft are becoming an arm of that. Some agencies are trying to provide first-mile-to-last-mile connectivity. It\u2019s an interesting transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

While with CDOT, Ford helped establish a partnership with Panasonic that included the development of a data ecosystem and installation of telematics equipment in 100 state-owned vehicles that routinely travel the I-70 corridor and 100 stationary, roadside vehicle-to-everything (V2X) units. The safety-focused system was designed to relay critical data such as traffic volume, collision sites, and hazardous road conditions \u2014 all transmitted at a rate of 2 billion datapoints per hour \u2014 and warn drivers before they encounter them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s telling you, \u2018Crash ahead, detour now\u2019 in a head-up display and audio built into the vehicle. It might seem similar to Waze. The difference is this is super-fast and super-accurate,\u201d Ford said. \u201cAnd if a vehicle\u2019s airbag deploys, it brakes hard, or the tires are slipping, that data is sent 10 times per second, fed into the system, and aggregated. The vehicle is telling you what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

by Tariq Kamal<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.government-fleet.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"JMF\"I\u00b4m\u00a0a Fleet Management expert, and the manager of\u00a0Advanced Fleet Management Consulting<\/a><\/strong>, that provides Fleet Management Consultancy Services.<\/p>\n

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Advanced Fleet Management Consulting, en colaboraci\u00f3n con Jaltest, GantaBI, Optimatics y Transporte Profesional, organizan el \u201cCurso para la Gesti\u00f3n de flotas de veh\u00edculos\u201d con el fin de formar a los profesionales en gesti\u00f3n de flotas a tomar una visi\u00f3n global y conocer todas las actividades y factores clave involucrados en la gesti\u00f3n de una flota de veh\u00edculos. El curso es \u00fanico en Espa\u00f1a y presenta un enfoque innovador al desarrollar una metodolog\u00eda propia para la gesti\u00f3n de flotas de veh\u00edculos.<\/p>\n

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18\u00ba CURSO PARA LA GESTI\u00d3N DE FLOTAS DE VEH\u00cdCULOS-Barcelona 9-10-11 de Octubre 2019<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telematics providers are working with government fleets to collect and report \u2018beyond-the-vehicle\u2019 data that informs decisions relating to operations, customer service, and public works. Image: Getty ImagesFleet vehicles equipped with air-quality monitoring \u201chats\u201d roam the streets of Houston as part of a collaboration between the city\u2019s health department and the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[165,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}