The Challenge

In Brazil, where 85% of the population live in cities, traffic congestion has been identified as one of the nation’s most pressing urban challenges. In the last 15 years, Brazil’s public transport ridership dropped 15%, while the country’s car fleet tripled. These trends exacerbate congestion and pollution. Every year the country registers over 45,000 road accident fatalities, which has an annual cost of US$9 billion.

SME Solution

iHotSpot is a prototype-stage AI-enabled system created by SpaceTimeAI that can improve road safety and reduce traffic congestion. The solution has already been tested in the UK, China and the US, leading to a 30-40% improvement in the predictive accuracy of traffic incidents, while using much less training data and shorter computing time.

This can enable better planning and decision making for city planners which can lead to a substantial decrease in traffic incidents. With highly flexible and visualised interfaces, it can be seamlessly fit into a wide range of in-house decision support systems through a flexible application programming interface.

Collaboration

SpaceTimeAI, Macnica  and Connected Places Catapult partnered to help assess the technical feasibility and validation of the demand for iHotSpot.  

The project, which competed with 300 submissions became one of 30 projects awarded grant funding to carry out a discovery phase to investigate the feasibility and demand for the iHotSpot solution in Brazil.

Connected Places Catapult brought human-centric design and impact assessment expertise to help gather insights from potential end-users/customers to validate the demand of iHotspot along with commercial networking opportunities aimed at preparing for future opportunities.

“Connected Places Catapult is delighted to be partnering with SpaceTimeAI on this exciting collaborative research & development project. The Catapult works hard to find opportunities in emerging markets where UK expertise can lend to local partnerships where new innovations can transform places." Amy Hochadel, Director of Global Business Growth from Connected Places Catapult

Benefits & Results

• Establishing and building strong relationships with industry organisations in Brazil
• Opportunity to uncover the challenges, needs and demands from potential end users to validate assumptions and tailor the solution for the end customer.  
• Securing a new project with local stakeholders to carry out a demonstration phase of the iHotSpot solution in Brazil.

If you’d like to find out more about the project or find out about collaboration opportunities please contact global@cp.catapult.org.uk