2.Can the use of AI help ease congestion and mobility in big cities?

Al Zaka: AI techniques can be applied to analyse traffic data (such as travel time, queue length, congestion levels) at different times of the day/locations, and correlate it with factors which are potentially causing traffic, such as accidents, road works, road maintenance, events, weather conditions, as well as places such as schools, universities, hospitals and tourist attractions.

The data can enable scientists to uncover patterns and simulate future scenarios, to predict how the traffic conditions will be impacted by future developments, road design changes, detours, major increase in population or any other future scenario, based on the intelligence built in the model.

Shakir: Definitely. In the past, people would make their journey based on their perception or past experience and many a time, this meant that taking certain routes resulted in a significant loading of popular road corridors. It was not possible for a driver then to forecast the live traffic condition on the road. With the development of AI technologies, it is now possible to send data live to mobile devices of passengers, for example, on live traffic conditions.

This results in significant redistribution of the traffic through the diversion from the popular congested corridors to the parallel roads which are at times not well utilised.