Waze Partners with Esri To Offer Live Traffic Alerts to American Citizens

• Google-owned company Waze will be offering its real-time crowdsourced traffic insights to American citizens as part of its partnership with Esri.
• Headquartered in the United States, Esri offers geodatabase monitoring systems, and it will be using Waze’s real-time feedback for free.
• The alerts will be provided through the Connected Citizens Program app.

Google subsidiary Waze is partnering with geodatabase monitoring company Esri to offer real-time traffic information to American citizens. Waze was a standalone app that was acquired by Google in 2014 to take advantage of its crowdsourced traffic reporting. The app's 'incident reporting' is a highly useful feature that can help users report crashes, roadblocks or other incidents that can prevent normal traffic movement.

Multiple American cities and municipalities are partnering with Waze and Esri as part of the Connected Citizens Program. The crowdsourced information that will be available to citizens can also help government officials make decisions about infrastructure. If accidents are common in specific areas, it could lead to changes to prevent them. The data can also help pave the way for self-driving cars and other technology.

Cities can sign up for the Connected Citizens Program for free and partners will be able to access all of the user-provided data instantly. It can eliminate the need for research by municipality officials and speed up infrastructural development.

Manager of Civic Technology at Esri Andrew Stauffer revealed “Municipalities can now leverage real-time reports without having to invest in sensor networks or an Internet of Things infrastructure. Waze allows local governments to share open data with a purpose—in an application that is already popular with constituents, commuters, and tourists.”

Waze has already partnered with over 100 cities around the world. Each partner gets access to the same data for free, allowing collaboration and communication between cities to create additional opportunities. Google Maps is also implementing Waze features to its app to help users report incidents globally even if the users’ cities are not part of the Connected Citizens Program.

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