Polaron delivers a multi-modal transport simulation tool providing real-time operational insights. With the rise in diverse transport modalities like e-scooters, bicycle use, and autonomous vehicles, there is an intricate web of transportation options and connections. No single solution fits every scenario, but Polaron’s simulation tools bridge the gap between different standards and data owners, offering advanced models of demand, supply, and infrastructure.
“Transportation is the center of the world! It is the glue of our daily lives. When it goes well, we don’t see it. When it goes wrong, it negatively colors our day, makes us feel angry and impotent, curtails our possibilities.”
Robin Chase, CEO of ZipCar
Simulating & Modelling Public Transport
- Simulation offers the opportunity to contextualize travel data, both historical and current. The complexity demands machine intelligence to simplify it into tangible and manageable information. Polaron stands out by allowing large-scale simulations based on real-time data for dynamic planning and investment validation.
Public transport is a vital aspect of city life, crucial for health, work, and social activities.:
The growing population in cities like London presents transport challenges. Efficient and reliable public transportation is essential to support urban growth, secure governmental and investor backing, and ensure a cost-effective service. Transport systems, some of which predate combustion engines, must adapt and evolve.
The infrastructure and second and third order dependencies and relationships, as well as the risk and resilience they afford are also poorly understood.
“Our decisions about transportation determine much more than infrastructure. They dictate daily life connections and barriers, influencing ease of movement.”
Elijah Cummings, US Senator & Civil Rights Activist
Elijah Cummings, US Senator & Civil Rights Activist:
Data unlocks insights, while simulation predicts outcomes, minimizing risks and supporting scalable trials.
Big data sets are vital, but often, a single trip’s modelling determines public transport choices.
- Polaron’s GIS-backed platform can rapidly process data and offer geospatial insights, catering to real-time data and interfacing with various tools, databases, and stakeholders.
- Keeps estimations up to date
- Can offer predictions
- Can mitigate and predict risks and issues ahead of time
Massive scale data modelling
Massive scale data modelling is possible via Polaron. However, acquiring, processing, and continually refreshing the data can be costly, akin to the expenses tied to high-frequency satellite data. Cities contain numerous key points that can be observed, modelled, and then behaviours can be inferred and monitored. This facilitates the creation of an increasingly accurate demand model. Demand waves and surges can be anticipated, and where possible, mitigated in advance. By considering not just individual sites but their relationships with their surrounding environments, typical choke points for passengers can be better operated and managed. Examples include security screenings at airports, underground or metro stations, or simply evaluating traffic flows. These evaluations enable machine learning to infer potential delays and consequential impacts, such as lane closures or delayed train arrivals. This forms the foundation for simulating mitigation strategies.
Polaron’s Capabilities
Polaron has numerous features tailored to your specific use cases. Developed over four years, Polaron fuses an incredibly fast spatial database with cutting-edge simulation and big data capabilities. This permits real-time multi-user simulations. While the platform does support the creation and maintenance of 3D models via real-time sensors, most users often have simpler needs like navigating from point A to B or testing a theory. Polaron facilitates such tasks while providing an opportunity to validate ideas, iterate upon them, and measure their impact on a living digital twin. Applications range from enhancing route safety, cost-saving strategies, reducing environmental impact, to improving accessibility for the disabled. The technology’s flexibility is reminiscent of how spreadsheets can be used for varied purposes, from laundry lists to managing entire companies. Similarly, Polaron offers a multitude of benefits for public transport.
Multi-modal mapping: Use known interchange points to derive a cost map for each area, such as a Tube or Metro station. Correlate this with known journey times and schedules on other transport modes to determine the best route. Preferences, like reduced mobility needs or a penchant for walking, can also be taken into account.
Pedestrian mapping & modeling: Begin with basic pedestrian mapping, like mapping routes achievable within a set timeframe. Enhance this by factoring in criteria like crime rates, time of day, preference for well-lit paths, or avoiding crowded areas during peak hours.
Attractors & Repellers: Polaron allows for the weighting of maps and decision-making within them. Entities can either attract or repel, enabling the modeling of both tangible and intangible effects. For instance, you could model the effects of closing a station during peak hours or the benefits of improved accessibility features at older stations.
Programmable Cellular Automatons: One method we use to simulate changes within the environment is the cellular automaton. Exposing this to users through a UI, APIs, and configuration lets them fine-tune local simulations, thereby refining the underlying model.
Interchanges & Capacity Modeling: Correlate behaviors between different transport modes and see how they impact each other. This leads to predictive capacity modeling and real-world optimizations, promoting changes in user behavior.
Future Transport Networks: Once a simulation is in place, you can experiment with potential changes. Consider the behaviors associated with EV cars, such as the locations of charging stations. The introduction of autonomous vehicles further complicates the scenario, as these vehicles, especially in a rental context, could swarm an area to maximize profit.
Volumetric Database: Underlying the visuals is a state-of-the-art volumetric database, touted as the fastest of its kind. It can display real-time sensor data, handle vast datasets, and process them swiftly. This includes capabilities like processing the entire OSM DB of the UK in under two minutes.
Semantic Segmentation & Object Import: Polaron offers AI & ML tools for semantic segmentation of a scene. Ingest volumetric data, tag it, and then build up an object recognition database to augment simulations. Objects can be imported into Polaron, allowing users to assign values to them.
Dynamic Journey Map Modeling
Polaron employs a proprietary means of propagation to cultivate and enhance cost maps, visualizing geospatially encoded locations that influence demand or restrict multi-modal transport systems. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. To model different scenarios, factors like delays, large events, and seasonal variations must be considered. By progressively modeling environmental changes, a comprehensive data lake can be established. This is complemented by real-time data, paving the way for predictive modeling using statistical, machine learning, and direct data inputs (e.g., sensors, API data). Encoding multiple data types into single spatial points allows for correlation analyses, facilitating the use of cost-effective, privacy-centric sensors to expand simulation reach.
Height, Terrain & DTM Maps: Enhance your simulations by integrating existing tools, infrastructure, and datasets.
Energy, CO2 Costs, and Pollution & Emissions: Regardless of the data source – be it relational or non-relational databases or even flat data files – we offer swift data import and subsequent processing.
Road & Rail Closure Impact: Polaron’s custom integration of WebRTC ensures that each user receives the fastest, most accurate data at any time. Allowing journeys and plans to be shaped around changes – and changes and closures will and inevitably do happen.
Last mile:
The journey doesn’t end at the station or bus stop, an end to end experience and demand led service offers the future for mobility and also integration into other commercial opportunities.
Responding to Unforeseen Events
Polaron is a cutting-edge simulation tool. With its advanced propagation modeling and intricate interfaces between different points within a volume, understanding the interaction of people becomes a complex endeavor. Yet, by quantifying specific spaces and tracking ground truths, it becomes possible to encode these interactions statistically. This enables insights into how changes in operations can lead to improved outcomes, whether that means reducing delays or combatting contagions.
Real-Time Simulation Rooted in Relevant Data
Polaron empowers users with up-to-date data and a real-time model. This ensures that the simulation remains anchored in both relevant and contemporary data inputs, allowing for more reliable and validated outcomes. The world is always evolving, which means maps and representations must be constantly updated. With Polaron, map and 3D data maintenance becomes a breeze. Users can integrate a plethora of inputs, from CAD and BIM to Lidar and phone scan data. This data can then be utilized in tools such as Unity for immersive experiences or used in simulations to assess potential changes and their repercussions.
The importance of accurate, real-time data becomes especially evident in the face of unforeseen challenges, such as extreme weather events or other high-demand situations. These scenarios can strain infrastructure and pose both health and operational risks, making efficient responses crucial. By using Polaron, organizations can address these challenges in a thoughtful, customer-centric manner, keeping in mind the diverse needs of their audience.
API Integration and Real-Time Collaboration
The true challenge of public transport is the necessity to integrate with multiple systems and networks. Polaron addresses this by providing an API portal that boasts an intuitive user interface. This portal supports mobile scanning, facilitating the integration with other systems and broadening the audience base. By leveraging even basic phone sensors, users can map environments, monitor emissions, and even incorporate thermal data from Low Earth Orbit satellites. All these capabilities underpin a more sustainable, customer-focused approach to public transport, enabling better operational practices and planning changes.
Key Features:
- REST APIs & Data Feeds: Integrate and manage your simulations seamlessly with existing tools and infrastructure.
- Database Integrations & Interfaces: Fast and efficient data import capabilities to derive spatial and relational insights.
- WebRTC Interfaces: Allows multi-user streaming and interaction with simulations and supports data sharing with other services.
- Multi-User Concurrent Sessions: Encourages collaborative work, granting various user rights and access levels.
City Scale Modelling
Modelling on a city scale becomes feasible when using a combination of tiles and layers. Polaron enables this by allowing values to be transferred between tiles and layers, simplifying complex simulations to a more understandable scale without compromising on interaction and analysis. This approach also fosters interoperability and scaling, allowing for both private and public instances. Such versatility ensures that while customer input and feedback are prioritized, sensitive information remains secure.
Unlock Polaron’s Potential for Your Business
Discover how Polaron can revolutionize your operations. Simulation not only gives context to travel data, but it also synthesizes and extracts valuable insights from diverse data points. The complexity of this process necessitates machine intelligence, ensuring that experts can focus on devising strategies rather than grappling with software. Polaron emerges as a game-changer in this landscape, facilitating large-scale simulations based on real-time data, thus supporting dynamic planning and integration with existing systems.
Enhance Your Simulations with Polaron:
- Fast Model Updates: Stay responsive with rapid updates based on sensor outputs.
- Time Scrubbing: Observe and understand event progressions and risk accumulations.
- Real-Time Alerts: Set business rule-based alerts for potential issues like overcapacity, delays, and unusual trends.
- Machine Insights: Enhance decision-making with transparent, sensor-validated AI insights.