Yandex.Traffic jams

Yandex.Traffic jams show users a picture of traffic congestion. To do this, the service collects data on street congestion from various sources, analyzes them and displays them on Yandex.Cartag. In the largest cities, where traffic jams are a serious problem, and not just a nuisance, the service calculates the score of traffic jams - the average level of congestion. To understand exactly how Yandex.Traffic jams work, let's consider the whole path - from the real road situation on the road to its image on the service. The service technology is designed in such a way that information about traffic jams is collected by the users themselves. That is, we can say that drivers help drivers bypass traffic jams.

How do Yandex.Traffic jams work?

Many drivers in Moscow use Yandex.Maps and Yandex.Navigator. Mobile devices transmit^[1] their coordinates, direction and speed to Yandex. The data goes to a special program that independently clarifies the tracks, superimposing them on a detailed city scheme - in case the GPS receiver made an error and showed that the car was, for example, in the park. Every two minutes, the information received from users is combined into one scheme, which is displayed among drivers in the application: Yandex.Navigator receives information about traffic jams and automatically offers the driver an alternative route. Mobile devices, cars, servers and Yandex programs communicate over the network without human intervention (except for the fact that a person launches an application and controls a machine) - this is the Internet of Things.

Data sources

For clarity, let's imagine that you and I are an accident on Strastnoy Boulevard in front of Petrovka (small and without victims). With our appearance, we blocked, for example, two rows of the existing three. Motorists who moved in our rows are forced to drive around us, and drivers who moved in the third row are forced to pass around. Some of them are users of Yandex.Maps and Yandex.Navigator applications, and their mobile devices transmit traffic data to Yandex.Traffic jams. As these users' cars approach our accident, their speed will decrease, and the devices will begin to "inform" the service about the congestion.

To participate in data collection, a motorist needs: a phone or tablet connected to the Internet with a GPS receiver and the Yandex.Navigator or Yandex.Maps application installed on this device with the "report traffic jams" mode enabled. Every few seconds, the device transmits its geographical coordinates, direction and speed to the Yandex.Probe computer system. All data is impersonal, that is, they do not contain any information about the user or his car. Then the analyzer program builds a single route with information about the speed of its passage - the track. The tracks come not only from private drivers, but also from the cars of Yandex partner companies (organizations with a large fleet of cars running around the city).

In addition to their coordinates, motorists can inform the service of additional information about accidents, repair work or other road troubles. For example, some conscious driver, seeing our accident, warned other motorists about it, putting an appropriate point in mobile Yandex.Cartag.

Track processing technology

GPS receivers allow errors in determining coordinates, which makes it difficult to build a track. The error can "shift" the car several meters in any direction, for example, on the sidewalk or roof of a nearby building. Coordinates received from users fall on the electronic diagram of the city, which very accurately displays all buildings, parks, streets with road markings and other city objects. Thanks to this detail, the program understands how the car actually moved. For example, in one place or another, the car could not enter the oncoming lane or the turn was made along the road markings without "cutting" the corner.

To correctly recreate the picture of traffic congestion, you need to check whether the track corresponds to the situation on your site. Users of mobile Yandex.Maps can sometimes stop or slow down not because of traffic jams, but, for example, to buy something at the kiosk or not miss an inconspicuous turn. And if several more cars with mobile devices drive freely past, such a track will be weeded out by the algorithm, because it does not display the real congestion of the site. Therefore, the more users the service has, the more accurate information about the traffic situation.

After combining the verified tracks, the algorithm analyzes them and sets "green," "yellow" and "red" estimates to the corresponding road sections.

Data pooling

Then there is aggregation - the process of combining information. Every two minutes, the aggregator program collects, as a mosaic, information received from users of mobile Yandex.Maps in one scheme. This scheme is rendered on the Traffic Jams layer of Yandex.Maps - both in the mobile application and on the web service.

Score scale

In Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities, the Yandex.Traffic service assesses the situation on a 10-point scale (where 0 points are free movement, and 10 points are worth the city). With this assessment, drivers can quickly understand how much time they will lose in traffic jams. For example, if the average score in Kyiv is seven, then the road will take about twice as long as with free traffic.

The score scale is configured differently for each of the cities: the fact that in Moscow there is a slight difficulty, in another city there is already a serious traffic jam. For example, in St. Petersburg, with six points, the driver will lose about the same time as in Moscow at five.

The points are calculated as follows. Routes have been drawn up in advance along the streets of each city, including the main highways and avenues. For each route, there is a reference time for which you can drive it on a free road without breaking the rules. After assessing the total workload of the city, the aggregator program calculates how much the real time differs from the reference time. Based on the difference in all routes, the workload in points is calculated.

Yandex.Traffic and Yandex.Navigator to plan effective offensive actions

Valentin Petrov, head of the information security service of the NSDC apparatus, said in May 2017 that Yandex Services is information about the state of the tracks, throughput and congestion of all roads in Ukraine online.

"If you need to plan any offensive, breakthrough, or some other actions, then you won't come up with a better situation. Agents, scouts, even satellites are not needed either. We give everything ourselves, "Petrov said.

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