How does the driving model work?
Overview
- We have built our own proprietary model for predicting and calculating drive times.
- This is built around peak and off-peak hours, rather than real-time traffic data, in order to provide reliable, consistent results.
- Peak hours - 07:00-10:00 and 16:00-19:00
- We take into account the time needed to walk to and from the road and the actual address, providing a true human routing system.
- The model itself takes a range of data sets such as OpenStreetMap and country-specific data, and then constructs speed profiles based around road types, the surrounding area, and features of the road itself.
- These speed profiles are then benchmarked on test maps, fine-tuned, and then set live.
- Once live, the models are regularly re-tested and updated.
Process in detail
- The map is broken down into urban and rural areas at a detailed local level, using data such as municipality limit shapes and speed limits
- The final areas are: Rural, Village, Town, Urban, City, Extra Urban, Dense Urban
- All roads are tagged with a road type, e.g residential, tertiary, trunk, motorway, etc.
- A library of representative trip samples is built
- Statistical modelling techniques are applied to build speed profiles for all combinations of road types and area, including the density of different connecting road types
- A test map is built
- The speed profiles are applied to real-world routes, taking into account map features such as traffic lights and zebra crossings, and peak and off-peak times
- Where appropriate, driving routes are book-ended with walking to represent how people actually travel, rather than simply ‘snapping’ to or from the nearest road
- Drive time predictions are tested extensively against a number of real-world routes and actual journeys
- The results of these tests are used to fine-tune the algorithm and speed profiles
- The model goes live, and is then regularly tested and benchmarked, and updated where appropriate