Internet of Things has been increasingly used in almost every industry and Transportation is no more an exception. Because people have been through a lot of problems and challenges while they travel from one place to another, a complete integrated solution was always a necessity. Many organizations developed the products to eradicate the problems but they did not come up as a sustainable solution.
It is important to realize that people do not buy any product or technology for their problem, they buy a solution to a problem. And so what IoT holds.
IoT is not a silver bullet or another way of making money. It should be considered as another tool or solution in the cutting edge technologies thus providing more value to customers. IoT should be considered in a way that the more focus should be on solving customer problems.
Let’s see how IoT has given a solution to the problems faced by consumers:
1. The traditional transportation system reduced the operational efficiency of the trucks-
The trucking industry forms a major portion of the global economy. According to the American Trucking Association, more than 70% of the freight tonnage is carried throughout the United States by trucks trailers taking goods from manufacturing plants to warehouses to retail stores. In fact, in some areas, the number is even higher. China transports 75% of its freight with the help of trucks and nearly 3/4th of all freight transportation is done via trucks in European Union Countries. With so much dependency on trucks and trailers, it is very much important that a company manages the fleet very efficiently such that low cost and high productivity is encountered. In the US, for example, it is reported that supply chain it a great demand but the increasing challenges and complexities are turning the pressure even higher. The traditional trucking system required different fluids to run properly but the leakage problem brought many issues like loss of air conditioning, overheated engine and many more which later on decreased the operational efficiency of the vehicles.
Adopting cutting edges digital technologies like IoT smart transportation, fleet management and many more can unlock seamless opportunities and productivity gains. In the past recent years, IoT has eradicated all the issues and improved the entire process with real-time information of the vehicle, driver behavior, and trailer information. By implementing IoT in Transportation, poor operational efficiency is no more a challenge. Whenever there is a fuel leakage or pilferage, an alert is sent to the respective manager. IoT sensors allow monitoring the vehicle performance by analyzing data, thus increasing the operational efficiency. Internet of Things has changed the face of the transportation industry, thereby adding bringing a dramatic change in the day to day operations.
2. The consumption of energy was increasing and congestion problems start arising-
Every year the United States uses 28% of its total energy to move goods and people from one place to another. The transportation sector includes many ways of transportation like personal vehicles to trucks to public transportation. The traditional transportation system used to consume a lot of energy for efficient routing management. But with the help of the Internet of Things, an optimized and efficient route can be decided thus consuming energy and saving time. Not only this, an approx. of 175 grams of carbon emission produced by the vehicles was eliminated. Traditional GPS technology involved tracking time and physical location, thus consuming more energy and not giving the desired outputs. IoT devices monitor real-time driver behavior such as which route drives take, driver’s braking habits etc. The traditional transportation system consumed a lot of energy during the route management but adoption of IoT into the traditional transportation system eradicated these problems. IoT sensors do not involve manual monitoring anymore thus reducing the consumption of energy. With time and modifications, manual monitoring became tough. IoT enabled temperature, pressure, heat and humidity sensors utilized energy in a very efficient way and adding great value to the business.
3. Tracking public transportation became difficult-
One of the major challenges of public transit was to get the real-time location about the vehicle and to know when it will arrive at a particular stop. Internet of Things allows tracking the real-time location of the vehicle. Districts install the GPS system on their vehicles (connected by the internet). This GPS data is sent further central command center. Once the data is received by the central command center, the data and information are sent further to the passenger’s internet enabled device. Hence, passengers can know the real-time information of the vehicle.
Not only this, many unforeseen/unexpected events such as climatic conditions, road closures, traffic jam etc. disrupt the public transportation system. Internet of Things has a unique feature which eradicates this problem. The implementation of IoT in Public Transit enables to re-route or find an optimized route, thus helping passengers to make alternate arrangements. Passengers receive real-time alerts notifying about the next stop or any other route taken. IoT has enabled the better transit systems thus developing a sustainable plan for the unforeseen circumstances.
Almost everybody loves to feel special. Personal information about passengers like where the person is, which route the passenger frequently takes, person’s travel habits etc. have been taken care of with the help of IoT. Internet of Things has enabled to send personalized travel information to passengers.
4. Increase in infrastructure cost and more damage-
The traditional transportation system, especially the overloaded ones used to put a lot of strain on the road thus impacting the infrastructure cost very much. So, a complete check on the vehicle's information like weight, size, goods being transported, type of vehicle etc. was a major necessity. Through IoT and smart devices, a check on the weight of the vehicles during loading and unloading became a reality. Overloaded vehicles would then be identified and thereby damage to roads and infrastructure got reduced. Real-time alerts after analyzing the massive amount of data can be received thus decisions can be taken well before in advance and greater efficiency too.
Governments have transformed their roads by using integrated IoT solution and using advanced analytics for better optimization of road management. As road management has leveraged IoT at its best, cities have become smarter now. Thereby giving a better and healthy life to the citizens. In fact, better road management has been treated as a science which provides critical data and providing efficient improvement across the cities.
5. No advance alerts and unavailability of parking slots-
Whether you drive into the city by your personal vehicle or by using public transportation, finding a roadside or public parking spot was always a challenge. Unfortunately, with the ever-increasing population and vehicles, the issue became serious. One of the recent studies says that U.S. motorists spend 17 hours on an average and about $97 per year searching for places to park. Internet of Things eradicated this issue and developed a cost-effective smart parking solution. IoT integrated system has not only made the parking hassle free but also reduced pollution.
The smart transportation system tells about the real-time information of the vehicle as well as the driver. The system works in a way that it tells about the potential dangers on the road well before in advance by sending the alerts. IoT Transportation has put a major impact on the parking systems as the real-time parking system got well managed. Additionally, the multi-level parking system reduces operating and maintenance cost. IoT sensors help in knowing the real-time data thus, increasing safety, efficiency, comfort in driving and parking.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
What does this mean?
Ultimately, the goal is to understand the consumer's problems and create a product that can give them a solution. So start by understanding the needs of the consumer and provide them with the solution rather than a technology.
Top comments (1)
As someone who worked in the traffic and transportation industry, I'm skeptical of some of your claims. The parking lot solutions are pretty nifty, I'll give you that. Data logging for fleet vehicles is a lot easier. But the infrastructure itself is still pretty screwed up.
Traffic lights have had the ability to network with each other and transmit traffic data for at least 10 years, so in theory you could modify light timings to an optimal case where you avoid the "convoy effect" where you end up with the same group of vehicles at every light, all equally impeded by traffic devices instead of traffic itself. But no one has figured out a solid way to build an optimal algorithm to synchronize everything. I imagine it's because so much specialized knowledge is required and the industry is all proprietary technologies, most of the business opportunities are writing protocol translators to make devices compliant with the NTCIP standards that the federal DOT designed...basically a set of data points and state machines a device must implement to be considered compliant, sent via SNMP messages in earlier versions or now XML.
The security of all of those devices is very, very concerning, and that's all I am going to say about that matter.