Case Study: Living Roads helps Nairobi improve road safety and fleet efficiency with IBM IoT analytics

IoT paves the way to cost-effective fleet management, safer roads, and reduced traffic congestion

Living Roads, a major urban municipality in a fast-growing city, faced the challenge of managing its vehicle fleet and maintaining roads without costly monitoring technology. Difficult road conditions and traffic congestion were severely impacting the efficiency of its new waste collection trucks and the daily lives of its citizens, making it hard to identify hazards like potholes and unregulated speedbumps. IBM was engaged to help find a solution using the Internet of Things.

IBM implemented a cost-effective solution by mounting smartphones running its IBM StreetSense app in the garbage trucks. The sensors in the phones streamed data to an IBM analytics platform in the cloud, including IBM InfoSphere Streams and IBM Cloudant. This created a digital map of road hazards and traffic flows. The results gave city officials their first clear view of potholes and inefficiencies, identified a major bottleneck at the dump, and enabled smarter route optimization and road maintenance planning, which improved safety and efficiency.