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Maddison Pace
Time to read: 1 minute
IT consulting company IDC has has released the list of winners for its fifth annual Government Insights Smart Cities Awards and Virginia Beach is among the honorees once again.
In the category of “Transportation – Connected & Autonomous Vehicles, Public Transit, Ride-Hailing/Ride-Sharing,” the city shares top honors with Wilson, NC. There were 14 categories this year, with Virginia Beach being the only winner from the state.
The awards are used to highlight cities showing “unprecedented progress in creating and sustaining smart city projects”, and Virginia Beach won this year thanks to its traffic data sharing partnership with Waze, a Google subsidiary known for its popular satellite navigation app.
The partnership means the city receives traffic information directly from Waze and thus can be more effective in responding to traffic events. Meanwhile, Waze can supplement its users’ gps data with information directly from the city about road closures, accidents, and more. From the city’s website:
The Connected Citizens program yields even more data, giving local citizens a greater ability to circumvent road closures and traffic jams within the app. During emergency situations, Waze also provides the option to search for nearby shelters and open gas stations, as well as utilize an SOS button to call on other Wazers for roadside assistance. Virginia Beach can also provide Wazers with advanced notice of flooded roadways during inclement weather and situation awareness during major traffic events such as marathons, festivals, parades and holiday weekends that will affect their daily routes.
Wilson, NC shares the honor thanks to RIDE, it’s micro transit service that replaced a fixed-line bus, and allows residents to travel between any two points in the city for a small fee.
Virginia Beach was also an awardee in the inaugural 2018 IDC Smart Cities Awards in the category of “Smart Water.”
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