GeoBase 3.6 helps you beat the Traffic
Feb
Location, location, location – we live in age where location-based services (LBS) are becoming ever more popular as connected mobile devices become more common and consumers are demanding location-relevant results from search engines. They don’t want to know the location of every Subway in town; they just want to know the one that’s closest to them.
LBS is powered by advanced mapping engines such as Telogis GeoBase, an SDK that can be downloaded for free, and used to create any sort of application that can provide users with accurate mapping, routing and other location-based services, such as the nearest point of interest.
And now Telogis have recently released version 3.6 of the popular geospatial mapping engine, with a bunch of new features that developers will no doubt find exciting uses for, as part of their customized mapping applications.
GeoBase 3.6 – What’s New?
The release of Telogis GeoBase 3.6 included several new features that will help developers build smarter, more flexible routing solutions. We’ll just discuss two of them here – waypoints and traffic layers.
Routing with custom waypoints
Firstly what are waypoints? They are like normal route stops but differ in that they do not trigger arrival or departure events, and are not disclosed on the directions provided, but the route will still pass through these points.
Waypoints can be used to modify routing to make sure certain roads are taken on the way to the next stop, influencing how drivers get from one point to the next. They can be used to check drivers are passing through a particular checkpoint along the route, without telling them the marker is being recorded or making them stop there.
Traffic Layer
In a perfect world, routing would be simple. You would choose the shortest distance between two points. But in the real world, it’s not that straightforward. There are a lot of factors to take into account to decide the optimal route between your starting point and end destination and traffic is one of those very important factors.
Telogis GeoBase 3.6 provides developers with the ability to layer traffic conditions on their map (see below) and route accordingly. This is a feature that offers huge commercial advantages to any business where being on-time is vitally important, whether it’s emergency services trying to reach a dying man or a news van trying to beat the competition to a recent event.
As shown in the diagram below traffic conditions are color-coded with red being the worst (traffic is moving, on average, less than 31% of the speed limit e.g. around 15mph on a 60mph road) to green (traffic is moving 92% of more of the imposed limit).
Traffic data is drawn from a number of sources and uses both historical, predictive and real-time to calculate the given traffic congestion at any given time. It means route planning systems can determine the best path to take based on the time of day and navigate the driver accordingly. It could also be used to compare the pros and cons of changing the time of day, or day of the week, a journey is taken. Applications like Telogis Route take it a step further, providing detailed cost comparisons to help fleet managers improve their profit margins.
Build your own application today
One reason GeoBase has become so popular is that it is focused on developers and helping them build their own, branded applications, without advertisements. It allows them to create highly customized tools that integrate closely with other business tools, like SuperShuttle have done with their advanced airport transfer system.
Get started today with a free download of the GeoBase SDK that includes a whole lot of helpful sample data, examples, easy-to-follow documentation and a helpful support forum.
