NextBillion.ai Partners With L&T Smart World to Power Smart Cities Across India

Cities of the future have always been envisioned as tech-enabled hubs that are geared towards seamlessly maximizing government efficiency as well as citizens’ safety and quality of life. NextBillion.ai, with its location-based technology and services, is partnering with systems integrator Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to bring that vision to life today.

Through this partnership, NextBillion.ai and L&T will work with state governments across India to actualize the potential for smart cities all over the country.

The technologies that makes smart cities possible

NextBillion.ai’s geospatial solutions combine location data and artificial intelligence to enhance city management in a number of ways. There are three solution components that work in conjunction to make this happen:

AI-powered location tools – NextBillion.ai’s AI and ML algorithms continuously process numerous data streams to deliver insights and recommendations on everything from pedestrian footfall and driver behaviors to emergency service dispatch and live route optimization. This is the core component that drives efficiency gains.

Custom maps – Generic maps follow a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that compromises performance and customizability. NextBillion.ai offers bespoke mapping solutions deeply focused on the specific needs and use cases of any given city, and empowers users to fully own and control their map stack, enabling them to independently make modifications as necessary.

Map data management – NextBillion.ai is capable of seamlessly merging third-party and proprietary data, enabling easy management of custom data layers like traffic regulations, custom routing preferences, POIs and terrain information. Regular update cycles and dedicated support ensure fresh and accurate maps, and the ability to gather data on pedestrians, motorbikes, cars, trucks and public transit maximizes relevance to the use case.

“This partnership is an excellent opportunity for us to showcase the real-world effects that our suite of location intelligence solutions can precipitate,”  Gaurav Bubna, Co-Founder of NextBillion.ai, remarked. “By teaming up with a behemoth like L&T to work with state government authorities all over India, we’re making all the right noises in all the right places.”

Impact of this partnership

As is to be expected with large smart city projects, the scope of impact for this collaboration is massive. The following are a few of the use cases we can tackle in each location.

Police Patrol Planning

For a sense of safety and security, it’s essential that citizens trust their police force to maintain order and respond quickly to emergencies. We make this possible by:

• Enabling police to navigate efficiently to impacted areas with precise location information
• Minimizing time-to-arrival with real-time traffic analysis and route planning that incorporates special permissions for emergency response vehicles
• Enhancing patrol fleet coverage and efficiency with live tracking and intelligent route planning
• Optimizing dispatch with location intelligence to assign the right tasks to the right officers

Waste Management

Waste management ensures the cleanliness of a city, as well as the health, wellbeing and peace of mind of its inhabitants. We help with:

• Hyper-accurate live tracking of collection trucks to monitor operations
• Map data to optimize routing and dispatch of vehicles for efficiency
• Custom navigation for trash collection from off-road paths, industrial regions, apartment complexes, etc.
• Tracking of foot traffic hotspots, trash bin capacity, etc. to ensure timely service
• Fleet management to maximize asset utilization and minimize downtime

Emergency Services

In matters of life and death, every passing second can have serious implications. We increase the odds of positive outcomes by:

• Improving response times with dispatch optimization, special emergency response vehicle routing and updated map data
• Providing exact POIs to first responders, drivers and ambulance companies
• Manipulating traffic and syncing with police to clear paths for emergency vehicles
• Enabling real-time flagging of road closures, diversions, traffic jams, etc.
• Providing data on which hospitals are equipped to handle each type of medical emergency

Traffic Management

Traffic is an increasingly significant and common issue that plagues cities around the world. Here’s how we can ameliorate the problem:

• Curating smart map data to help cities build efficient urban mobility infrastructure
• Using AI-driven adaptive signals for real-time navigation and traffic management
• Providing a performance overview of the smart city road network with dashboards
• Collecting and analyzing data to understand traffic patterns and driver behaviors

This alliance will be a fruitful one, not just for the two organizations involved, but also for the people of the cities they’ll be operating in, whose everyday lives will be improved.

As for the future of this partnership, L&T and NextBillion.ai will be sharing relevant opportunities with each other going forward, so the relationship is poised to deliver even further growth and value to both parties in time. This is just a first step!