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ShiSh
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Feb 09, 2020

Helping Reduce CO2-Emissions with Azure Maps

 

Transportation and Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Even though the switch from coal power to less-polluting natural gas has reduced CO2 emissions from its electric grid, transportation has become the largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the United States today, and the bulk of those emissions come from driving in our cities and suburbs. According to the EPA, 60% of those emissions are from the 250 million passenger cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. Freight trucks contribute to an additional 23%.

 
 

 

Source: Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks

Eco-Friendly Route Optimization

Knowing that transportation accounts for a significant share of CO2-Emissions, undertaking responsibilities for its environmental impact are critical. While solutions to reduce emissions are being developed and implemented, it may not have an immediate impact on the existing infrastructure and fleets around the world. A strategic approach to reducing emissions instantly, for existing transportation options, could be through route optimization. Today, many organizations use Route Optimization for optimizing time and expense. They can expand on this, to account for sustainability by optimizing for environmental impact such as fuel consumption and CO2-Emissions.

Azure Maps and Eco-Friendly Routing

The expectations for eco-friendly routing optimization requires routing algorithms to take into account various factors about the geography and terrain including elevation, inclination, type of roads and location intelligence about traffic & weather patterns along the route.

 

 

To enable eco-friending transportation, Azure Maps has best of breed content partnerships with TomTom, Moovit and AccuWeather. The Azure Maps partnership with TomTom enables customers to access the freshest maps and traffic-based routing information. Moovit provides real time transit and rideshare data through the Azure Maps API. Integrating Moovit’s transit data into Azure Maps help developers build richer apps that can enable optimizing public transportation options in cities. With the inclusion of Weather Services (in partnership with AccuWeather) as part of the Azure Maps API, customers can seamlessly integrate current & forecast weather as well as weather along a route into their applications. The content partnerships enable Azure Maps users to factor in weather, traffic, public transit and terrain into their routing solutions.

 

 

The Azure Maps Routing API’s detailed here include API’s for getting route directions, route range and many other options that include batch and matrix routing. The Routing API’s return a route between an origin and a destination, passing through waypoints if they are specified. The route will consider factors such as current traffic and the typical road speeds on the requested day of the week and time of day. This can help determine the most environmentally sustainable routes based on road speeds and traffic. Information returned includes the distance, estimated travel time, and a representation of the route geometry. Additional routing information such as optimized waypoint order or turn by turn instructions is also available, depending on the options selected. The most interesting, from an eco-friendly route optimization perspective, is that the routing service provides a set of parameters for a detailed description of the vehicle-specific Consumption Model. You can specific through the various parameters of the Routing API’s, the engine type of the vehicle for which the routing has to be done: combustion or electric. Depending on the type of the engine and other parameters that you specify including constant speed consumption, acceleration, deceleration, uphill, downhill efficiency and more, the consumption model for the specific vehicle will be created. See the details of the Consumption Model here.

 

 

The Weather along a route API in Azure Maps returns hyperlocal (one kilometer or less), up-to-the-minute weather nowcasts, weather hazard assessments, and notifications along a route described as a sequence of waypoints. This includes a list of weather hazards affecting the waypoint or route, and the aggregated hazard index for each waypoint might be used to paint each portion of a route according to how safe it is for the driver. Data is updated every five minutes. The service supplements the Azure Maps Route Service that allows you to first request a route between an origin and a destination and use that as an input for Weather Along Route endpoint. This enables better route planning using weather based influencers for optimizing the carbon footprint of the trip.

 

Azure Maps & EV Routing

Also, of interest, is that Azure Maps builds out the Electric Vehicle consumption model when the type of engine is specified as Electric. In this case the Routing API’s enable you to enter parameters that include constant speed consumption in kWh Per hundred km, current charge in kWh, maximum charge in kWh and much more.

 

 

Routing for Electric Vehicles can take into account, locations of charging stations, remaining charge, traffic congestion, best times for travel based on weather conditions and traffic and more. 

 

Most electric vehicle batteries lose a percentage of their charge when the temperature dips below freezing. With Azure Maps Weather Services, you can use current or forecasted temperatures to determine your vehicle’s range. Range can determine how far a vehicle can drive along a route, set better expectations for estimated arrival times, and define the route based on locations of charging stations.

 

For a hands on experience with the EV Routing capabilities in Azure Maps, have a look at our Azure Notebooks (Python) based tutorial and walkthrough here: Tutorial: Route electric vehicles by using Azure Notebooks (Python).

Managing Routing Exceptions with Geofencing

Geofencing is typically used for enabling a virtual perimeter or fence around a geographical area. They have been used for defining danger zones in construction areas, creating perimeters around areas to prevent heavy equipment from entering, for triggering notifications and workflows when someone or something enters a marked zone and much more. Geofencing can also be used for fleet management when combined with routing for exception reporting on activities of fleets and driver behavior.

 

 

When using the parameters in Azure Maps routing to enable eco-friendly route optimization, companies can use geofencing in conjunction with Routing to ensure that the defined routes are being followed. 

 

Azure Maps provides several spatial services as part of this API’s. The Azure Maps GET Geofence and POST Geofence APIs allow you to retrieve proximity of a coordinate relative to a provided geofence or set of fences.

 

An excellent video walkthrough of the Geofencing capabilities is an episode of the Azure IoT Show with OIivier Bloch and Jim Bennet: Geofencing with Azure Maps. For a detailed tutorial and walkthrough of the Geofencing capabilities in Azure Maps, have a look at this: Tutorial: Set up a geofence by using Azure Maps. Another tutorial that delves into how a combination of IoT and Azure Maps capabilities can help track fleets can be found here: Tutorial: Implement IoT spatial analytics using Azure Maps.

Azure Maps & Environmental Impact

With the increasing threat of climate change, an eco-friendly approach to fleet management and transportation routing is becoming necessary. Through the adoption of alternative fuels and eco-friendly routing options, we can make an impact on the world. 

 

For more details on Azure Maps here are some resources:

 

 

 

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