Mar 16, 2018The Moscow Government's Department of Information Technologies (DIT) is automating the dispatching and management of 22,000 municipal vehicles throughout the city, with the help of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The system, which employs onboard sensors using satellite location and cellular transmission, has reduced the rate of vehicle breakdowns to almost zero, the city reports, and has saved the city budget approximately $162,000 monthly by reducing fuel consumption. That cost is equivalent to buying two new snow plows every month. The system was taken live this year, following several years of planning and testing.
The solution tracks the locations and movements of everything from street sweepers and snow plows to garbage trucks and water carts. In this way, the technology captures data required to understand speed, fuel consumption and how each vehicle is being operated.
The data being collected from each vehicle enables the daily dispatching of trucks and other city vehicles based on weather forecasts and records of past vehicle operation. The system can calculate the best route and pattern of movement for each vehicle, every day, based on those details, according to Andrey Belozerov, the strategy and innovations advisor to Artem Ermolaev, Moscow's CIO. It can also determine, based on sensor data, when a vehicle needs to be inspected, maintained or repaired, enabling the city to avoid breakdowns.
The DIT has been developing technology-based solutions for the city throughout the past six years. It launches about 300 new projects annually, aimed at providing such services as electronic medical records, city-wide Wi-Fi and telemetrics for housing and public amenities.
"The initial idea behind the project was to automate the process [of vehicle dispatching] to the greatest extent possible," Belozerov says. The department wanted to know how each vehicle was operating (its fuel use and engine temperature, for instance), as well as how much work a given vehicle and driver could accomplish within a single day.
Historically, the city has hired several dozen private companies to provide street-sweeping, snow-plowing and waste-collection services. In 2013, the DIT first began installing IoT technology to better understand those vehicles' movements. Companies were asked to install Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) technology—a satellite-based navigation technology similar to GPS—on all of their vehicles, as well as on some specialized equipment used for Moscow city services.
The DIT then began the process of creating standards for data collection and a single platform to manage data collected from all vehicles. "Thanks to these new standards," Belozerov says, "we then managed to integrate all the vehicles into one network controlled by the IoT platform."
The GLONASS-based sensors transmit encrypted data to the Department of Housing and Communal Services and Improvement of Moscow's dispatch center server via a cellular transmission, using telemetric services provided by Rostelecom. The data is transmitted at the rate of approximately 1,300 packets per second, or 110 million packets per day. That information can then be managed and viewed by authorities at the dispatch center, as well as by Moscow's mayor and other officials.
"The GLOSNASS satellites transmit the signal, thus identifying the location of each vehicle," Belozerov states. "When the vehicle is on the move, the [system] is monitoring the speed or direction changes. When the vehicle stops, we get the data every 20 minutes."
Almost as soon as the system was taken live, Mother Nature challenged its functionality. During one February weekend, Moscow experienced the highest precipitation on record: 17 inches, the same amount that the city more typically sees throughout a full month. That meant the heavy use of city vehicles—in fact, more than 15,500 were used to clear away 1.2 million cubic meters (42.4 million cubic feet) of snow. It was what Belozerov calls a real "crash test for the new system."
During the storm and subsequent clean-up efforts, the city encouraged residents to leave their cars at home and use public transportation.
In the future, the DIT says the technology is able to monitor not only each vehicle's operation and location, but also the driver's performance and status. For instance, Belozerov says, the city could identify the first signs of fatigue in a driver, and enable him or her to be replaced or to rest before a road safety hazard occurs. Such a system, he claims, could consist of wristbands to monitor a driver's movements, or even hats that monitor brain activity and notify supervisors if the driver is losing focus; while these are potential opportunities, Belozerov notes, the DIT has no immediate plans to implement the system in that way.
