This talk will present how a small start-up (Waveonics) with no prior graphical database experience employed the simplicity, versatility and flexibility of Neo4j to handle the complex and dynamic roadway conditions found in crowdsourced street map data. We map the route taken to transit from a relational to graphical data model in support of the next generation roadside service applications for an established leader in the roadside service industry (Agero). We will show how Waveonics and Agero used Neo4j to detect and understand changing roadway conditions in order to identify emerging trends and thereby improve driver safety and the driving experience.
Recent advances in mobile device sensors, GPS location services, communication technology, crowdsourced data acquisition, affordable cloud storage, machine learning and data analytics, has opened the door to an exciting world of new services. Capitalizing on these opportunities requires providers continually organize, store, manage, access and update terabytes of information efficiently. They need databases that are powerful enough to model the complexities of the business environment and easy to modify as the environment evolves - without sacrificing the performance demanded by data analytics. Waveonics is working with Agero Mobile to explore and validate the use of graphical databases (Neo4j) to drive Agero’s mission of delivering a “holistic approach [which] helps anticipate and meet customers’ needs in a way that forms lasting connections with them.” Agero is building on Neo4j to further its leadership position in the automotive, insurance, finance and roadside service industries.
Waveonics will outline best practices used to convert 175 GB of XML relational US street map data obtained from the Open Street Map (OSM) project into a Neo4j graph database in order to successfully enable predictive roadway analytics for Agero. Attendees will learn how Neo4j’s graph data model and Cypher query language effortlessly supported an elegant representation of street map data, continually updated from customer mobile sensors, to reflect evolving road conditions.
Agero is a privately held company and has been serving motorists in North America for over 40 yrs. Agero assists drivers with their vehicles when there is a breakdown or in an accident or needs repair by connecting auto manufacturers, insurance companies, financial institutions, dealers, tow and road service providers, repair facilities among a host of other entities. In past 20 years we have pioneered some of the cutting edge telematics solutions that are currently being shipped in today’s vehicles.
Currently we are working on the next generation of telematics solutions by challenging our science and engineering teams to use nothing but the sensors in mobile phones to determine accidents so we can help save lives, determine safe driving behavior so we can personalize coaching to our drivers and also help insurance companies offer different rate plans which are more targeted to the quantified safe driving behavior of the drivers.
- Industry leader in white label roadside for over 40 years, with over 100 corporate clients- Over 9.5 million roadside and accident management services/year
Services included in nearly 75% of new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. each year
Over 20 years of connected vehicle experience
350 Functional API end points that we have developed and continue to support
Open Street Map is a rich source of Roadway and Map information.
Built by Users and Stakeholders with a passion collecting and distributing accurate map information for the world
Open sourced requiring crediting OSM as data source
OSM files have layers of information
1st layer is the foundation – the nodes. They are latitude / longitude points that the other layers will reference. These may have descriptive properties
2nd layer is ways - an ordered sequence nodes sharing common properties. Might be segment of road, bike path, train tracks, etc. It’s not the entire road, just a portion with common properties.
3rd layer is relation – some combination of other relations, ways and/or nodes. Can define a boundary such as city limits or entity such as university or lake
File first defines all the nodes – the foundation
Then the ways – sequence of nodes sharing common properties
Then the relations – references to preceding nodes, ways and/or relations to describe a semantic relationship
Very rich, Very flexible, Pretty ’loose’ associations and references