City of Austin Partners with NTT to Accelerate Smart City Technologies

Austin, Texas – May 27, 2020 – The City of Austin and NTT Corporation (NTT) today announced their intention to partner on an Accelerate Smart pilot project that will use new technologies to analyze traffic patterns, ease congestion and support community planning in Austin.

NTT’s Accelerate Smart data platform, as well as modular data center infrastructure for edge deployments, will monitor traffic-related issues downtown using Internet of Things (IoT) devices deployed at the intersections of Cesar Chavez Street and Trinity Street and Guadalupe Street and 5th Street. The smart city project will collect traffic-related and mobility data through vehicle counting and classification, as well as wrong way vehicle occurrences, to provide real-time notifications and better inform how to implement appropriate solutions to fit traffic patterns.

“We are piloting NTT because these solutions have the potential to help Austin digitally transform how people move safely through the city. By better understanding the data and causal effects of problems we see in challenging areas, we can develop effective solutions that meet the community's needs,” said Jason JonMichael, Assistant Director of Smart Mobility, Austin Transportation. “Evaluating data is key to reaching our Vision Zero goal of eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on Austin roadways. Smart technologies like this one will help us prioritize improvements to make our streets safer.”

Using IoT, NTT will deliver the City real-time alerts and traffic statistics that improve predictions and outcomes for the City of Austin. The Accelerate Smart service will collect and detect data, including vehicle counts and occurrences of wrong-way driving, to enable the City to make informed recommendations for effective transportation planning aligned with the Vision Zero initiatives.

The pilot program is designed to provide automated deployment and operation of necessary information and communications technology (ICT) resources from devices and networks to the cloud. This will allow the City to focus on improving traffic conditions through analysis and process data more efficiently without worrying about deployment and optimization issues.

“For the City of Austin, traffic management is a critical component to minimize the challenges of rapid, significant growth,” said Akira Shimada, Senior Executive Vice President, NTT. “Our Accelerate Smart solution will help the City of Austin in their pursuit of pedestrian safety goals and position them for continued innovation to improve the lives of residents and visitors.”

NTT’s Accelerate Smart solution was developed as a joint initiative across NTT’s global operating companies. It uses a secure, distributed network as a platform solution built on NTT’s innovative Cognitive Foundation™ architecture, and also incorporates hyperconverged infrastructure and IoT gateways, as well as virtualization software hosting predictive analytics applications.

Following the initial pilot, the City of Austin and NTT plan to evaluate the viability of extending the pilot and potentially adding locations. Learn more about NTT’s Accelerate Smart solution.