Kiwi Company GeoSmart Helps Make Navigating Australian Traffic Congestion Easier

A little over a year since launching real time traffic services in New Zealand, Kiwi location based services company GeoSmart has launched a similar new service for the benefit of motorists throughout Australia. Utilising systems developed locally, GeoSmart has made this technology available to next generation car navigation systems fitted with SIM Cards. Now motorists with compatible car navigation systems are able to receive live information on road accidents, incidents and traffic congestion anywhere in Australia where compatible mobile phone networks are available. This will enable motorists to be informed not only on how to get to their destination, but also what obstacles may stand in the way and how they may be able to avoid them. First cab off the rank to launch this service in Australia is HD Traffic from TomTom.

"The service, just launched in Australia, supports the ability to view accidents and incidents in real time on a car GPS unit. It also allows nav units to calculate the delay on a trip based on traffic congestion and to offer alternate routes which may enable the motorist to get to their destination more quickly," Phil Allen said. "We are seeing a new generation of car navigation buyers in New Zealand and overseas who often know their way to their destination, but don't know what is ahead that may prevent them from arriving on time. It gives them options."

GeoSmart, a wholly owned subsidiary of the New Zealand Automobile Association, launched nationwide real time traffic services in New Zealand last year starting with the AA Roadwatch and AA Maps websites, and SMS and Email Route and Area Alerts from the AA Traffic web site. This was quickly adopted and integrated by leading brands of car navigation including Navman and TomTo

m in New Zealand.

Having built their first solutions in New Zealand, GeoSmart developed systems to allow it to receive quality journalistic information from a variety of official sources, validate and interpret it, confirm the locations and then be able to transmit the data to a range of car navigation brands and devices. The congestion data is collected in a continuous stream from anonymous GPS tracked commercial vehicles throughout Australia and New Zealand. A sophisticated software environment analyses that data in order to provide information about how fast traffic is flowing on roads and highways. All of this is managed by GeoSmart's call centres 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A major issue for real time traffic services is the ability to provide high quality current information and get it to motorists anywhere in the country as quickly as possible. People do not want to be warned about incidents that have already been cleared.

GeoSmart is a location based services company providing data to leading Car Navigation companies, Fleet Management companies, Cartography, Web Mapping for Internet and Mobile Apps, Reverse Geocoding, Business Visualisation and other tools to clients including Navman, TomTom, Yellow, Air New Zealand, NZMCA, Just Water and the NZ Automobile Association. It has clients in Australia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.