BARCELONA, February 24, 2014: INRIX, a leading big data technology company today unveils a new analytics tool that could revolutionise everything from road planning and event management to retail strategies and financial forecasting. INRIX Population Analytics1 utilises billions of aggregated and anonymised mobile data points to provide information on population movement and is emerging as a new and powerful tool for strengthening communities, building smarter cities and creating better customer relationships. Through partnering with INRIX, population analytics creates an opportunity for mobile operators to benefit from lucrative new revenue streams and enter new vertical sectors in a global industry that is forecast by analysts to be worth more than USD$11 billion by 20162.
“INRIX is one of the few companies that can deliver accurate, aggregated and anonymised population analytics insights. We have spent a decade refining and patenting algorithms that are capable of integrating and interpreting mobile data with INRIX’s crowdsourced network of GPS, road sensor and connected car data sets,” said Rafay Khan, SVP Sales & Product, INRIX. “As a result INRIX Population Analytics delivers high quality and accurate population flow analysis, providing valuable insights that support a number of use cases from smart city planning and retail insight to venue management, advertising and investment planning.”
In the UK, INRIX uses its mobile operator partner’s aggregated and anonymised data to provide insights to customers; in return, the operator gains an additional revenue stream. For mobile operators that are yet to benefit from population analytics, partnering with INRIX would negate the need to invest in large, costly and time consuming technology infrastructure – a key consideration for operators as they seek to take advantage of the increasingly clear benefits of location insight platforms such as INRIX Population Analytics.
The benefit of mobile data is that it is readily available from a large and evenly distributed number of sources. This brings several advantages such as scale; the sheer volume of data means that sample sizes correlate statistically with real-world population volumes, ensuring that analysis can deliver meaningful results. However one specific barrier to using mobile data is the sheer technical difficulty involved in processing enormous quantities of information – INRIX aggregates more than 1.5 billion real-time data points a day in the UK alone. Managing volume is just one aspect of the processing task; a critical focus for mobile operators and INRIX is also ensuring the anonymity of the data.
Many projects utilising INRIX Population Analytics are underway. During the London 2012 Olympics, INRIX worked with Transport for London (TfL) to analyse real-time population flow across the capital and around key events, enabling TfL to make better-informed transport planning decisions. Other examples include a travel time measurement system used by Connect Plus to manage one of the busiest motorways in Europe, the M25 London Orbital; providing essential data for the M25 Junction 30 Congestion Relief Scheme Study undertaken by Jacobs UK Ltd on behalf of the UK Highways Agency; and a venture in partnership with Mouchel to build a multi-modal picture of travel across Greater Manchester.
“It is still early days for population analytics, but the message about this new innovation and the major revenue opportunity it presents is already clear; its potential is limited only by the imagination of its users,” said Khan. “Increasingly, it will be the mobile operator community, in partnership with INRIX that will be helping to stimulate that imagination.”
Please click here for a more in depth overview of INRIX Population Analytics and the opportunity for mobile operators: www.inrix.com/mobile/populationanalyticsoverview.
Visit INRIX at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Hall 8.1, Stand 8.1A11.
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Notes to editors
1INRIX Population Analytics is a data-driven analytical technique for monitoring the origin and destination of large groups of people. Its power comes from the ability to understand not just where large groups of people are at a given time, but where they’ve been, how they got there and where they may be going next. Knowing where lots of people start their journeys to a major sporting event, for example, can help local authorities plan and manage every aspect of the relevant transport arrangements with much greater precision. Similarly, a retailer who knows what percentage of customers live in a particular area has a much clearer view of its real customer demographics, and can modify its strategy accordingly.
2 Making Money from Location Insights, Telco 2.0 / STL Partners, August 2013.
