Cambridge Consultants has developed Olio, a powerful data analysis framework for improving intelligent transport systems (ITS).

It claims Olio enhances these applications by processing data from disparate sources using a statistical approach and displaying the output using an intuitive user interface.

This ‘data fusion’ means that Olio provides far more detailed and accurate traffic information than has been possible to date, says the company.

Cambridge Consultants will be demonstrating one of the potential applications of the new system at ITS World Congress (October 16-20) in Florida.

Olio is designed to handle large volumes of potentially low quality data and to extract the useful information through statistical data fusion. The data inputs can be highly varied in nature, such as GPS and an output from a video analytics package; and the algorithms can cope with different data sources being available at different times.

The Olio framework is designed to analyse the available data using statistical methods based on the known characteristics of the input data - meaning that the available data can be ‘cleaned up’ to deliver more meaningful analysis, regardless of the quality.

Olio builds on Cambridge Consultants' work with the UK Highways Agency combining video and roadway detector data to identify incidents, and the new data analysis system can be incorporated into a variety of services. Potential applications include:

• More accurate traffic information for drivers

• Better information to feed advanced traffic management systems

• Fleet management information to optimise parameters such as arrival time, fuel consumption and servicing schedules