Case Study

Sustainable mobility
for the smart city

Concept Reply has developed “ServiceGuard” for YUNEX TRAFFIC, a solution that enables greater efficiency and quality in the operation of traffic infrastructures.

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Improve the service process of traffic infrastructure

The common picture of a traffic control center is a big room with numerous giant monitors and controller devices. From these control centers, the traffic in cities is observed and action taken, if necessary.

But people in these control centers can only do their job if the infrastructure is in good condition and fully operational. To ensure proper maintenance and a high-quality performance, many communities and cities have service contracts with Yunex Traffic. Yunex Traffic is responsible for frequently checking and repairing the installed infrastructure. To make the life of these service management and service teams easier, Yunex Traffic came up with the idea of the Service Guard. It is a browser-based application that gives both, the service management in the office, and service teams in the field, the ability to monitor events and status of events (e.g., traffic lights) in real time and reduce reaction times in case of problems.

A mobile web application

Concept Reply conceptualized the solution and developed a lightweight mobile and online tool: ServiceGuard.

ServiceGuard is a web-based application to monitor and control traffic objects, such as traffic lights, parking facilities and detectors. These objects are connected through ServiceGuard to the Munich data space built by Yunex Traffic, where the technical stand is consistently maintained and updated. It provides the user with monitoring and management functions of real traffic objects, and equips the admin-user with administration tools to arrange the access levels in their team.

ServiceGuard: The features

Concept Reply developed ServiceGuard as a scalable and cloud-native application to brief massive and intertwined traffic data in a small smartphone display.

Visualization Features

The web-application is based on a map-view (from the open-source project OpenStreetMap) which visualizes all traffic objects assigned to the logged-in user. The zoom in/out and retrieving the last view features enable the user to easily navigate the assigned area. The status of the traffic objects will be updated in real-time through color-coded status view in ServiceGuard. This provides the user with a more organized overview of the control area. The user can also filter the visible objects based on their types (e.g. intersection, parking, detector). Users can also switch to list-view and have the objects displayed in a tabular form. In the list-view the user can also hide and unhide the columns of the table. It is also possible to mark selected objects which are listed separately so they create a "favorite" view section which has the same features and appearance of the general list.

To keep the map readable, a brief overview of the object's properties can be displayed by a simple click. On double-click or through a name/ID search-feature, more detailed options of the selected object (e.g. its activity logs, list of the connected detectors, and the signal plan) will be displayed. The activity logs records and saves every detailed change in the state of the selected object such as a change in its signal plan or status. The user can filter the logs based on dates.

The signal plan of the selected object (intersections) may be displayed either as a table or in a timeline. Whereas the table view shows the current activated signal plan of the object, the timeline view shows its successive signal plans through time. The user may select a threehour-clip interval of the signal plan and zoom in to see more details.

Modification Features

The user can leave public notes or upload images related to the objects. The uploaded images and notes become visible for others in the network, and they can be used for sharing information about the object (e.g. in relation to document defects). Through unread-note badges for each user no note is left unnoticed.

The user can also modify the selected signal plan by assigning a new plan from the list of possible options. A selected end time in the future displays till when the new plan stays effective. A two-level authorization process for the modifications of the signal plan ensures that no tap by mistake or unauthorized person can apply a change to the signal plan.

Administration Features

ServiceGuard Administration is a separate platform which provides administration features. A network in ServiceGuard can be launched by at least one administrator. He or she is authorized to create or assign roles to the users in the network. The role is defined by setting the access levels to a country, region, city, and object type. Once a role is assigned, the access level will be set according to the assigned role.

Easy to use and continuously improving

Concept Reply’s development of ServiceGuard brought the Yunex Traffic service organisation a real-time, reliable, mobile, and cost-efficient system for the traffic infrastructure monitoring. To make ServiceGuard operational, users need only a smartphone. The web-application works flawlessly on any conventional operating system on smartphones, such as Google's Android, or Apple's iOS. The cognitively designed and structured graphic interface of the application enables anyone with basic or even no prior knowledge of traffic management software to easily on-board and use ServiceGuard. 

As a distributed mobile tool, ServiceGuard can be further developed to obtain the local data of each traffic object in the system and use them as a tool to prevent a partial or complete traffic failure. More specifically, in the future, ServiceGuard can be enhanced so that users enter the maintenance data of the traffic objects, such as the time and the type of the last repair or replacement. This data can be used for a probabilistic model to predict the next possible failure or error in the system. This brings a considerable boost to the reliability of the system, notably reducing downtime.

Concept Reply

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Concept Reply is an IoT software developer specializing in the research, development and validation of innovative solutions and supports its customers in the automotive, manufacturing, smart infrastructure and other industries in all matters relating to the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing. The goal is to offer end-to-end solutions along the entire value chain: from the definition of an IoT strategy, through testing and quality assurance, to the implementation of a concrete solution.