India's largest software services company has unveiled a smart city solution aimed at optimizing Belfort's (France) urban bus transportation.
Tata Consultancy Services, a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization which is head-quartered in Mumbai - has collaborated with Gfi Informatique - which is a major vendor of value-added IT services and software in France, and the city's Board of Public Transportation.
The partnership between the three organizations has been officially announced - and the project has been entitled 'A Proof of Concept for the City of Belfort'. They will all collaborate to support Belfort's smart city strategy, which aims to help local authorities deploy digital transformation projects.
The innovative smart city initiative in Belfort is a direct result of a joint investment between Gfi Informatique and TCS Digital Software and Solutions group. It has been disclosed in a statement issued on behalf of both companies that they will merge to deploy TCS 'Intelligent Urban Exchange' software in order to enable city administrators and public transportation planners with the ability to make more informed decisions through insights from a combination of both historical and real-time data.
The companies have worked with the city to enhance the capture and treatment of large amounts of information using big data analytics solutions designed specifically to help public sector customers, with the overall goal that this proof of concept will lead to larger scale digital innovation across the city.
Over the last several years, the transportation environment in cities around the world has become more complex while the need for greater integration has expanded. In the face of these changes, cities such as Belfort are embracing smart city technology to optimize transportation services with existing or diminishing resources, without significantly impacting their carbon footprint.
Director of the Board of Public Transportation of Belfort said the aim of the initiative is to support the local economy and make the city a better place for its residents to live in. "We were eager to participate in this experiment to make Belfort more attractive to citizens and support the economy. The results were very conclusive. The experiment allowed us to optimize our transportation network and realize savings. It was such a big success that it could be duplicated to improve not only transportation but also other major city services such as water, waste collection and electricity.”
Part of their efforts to establish the Proof of Concept involved Belfort providing daily bus transportation from the city's bus lines such as billing and ticketing data. The data was managed and analyzed using TCS' software, which was supported by Gfi Informatique's public sector domain expertise and data analytics resources.
Earlier this week in Paris, authorities deployed a number of driverless buses in the city in their latest steps to embrace what they've described as the 'autonomous revolution' - the latest developments in Belfort represent another significant innovation in relation to transportation in France.