How Vizzion can save your team over 6,000 hours per year on sourcing, quality control, and support
As the leading provider of road-facing camera data, Vizzion is well-equipped to supply you with the camera data and value-added services you need for your unique traffic, weather, hazard, or infrastructure monitoring project. We've spent more than 6,000 hours in the last year to make our products the best that they can be, and this commitment to quality can be seen in our data feeds, technology, and customer support.
We employ automated tools to bolster the work done by our full-time maintenance team to continuously monitor, add, and repair camera data feeds. All of our camera data is available through a rich API and enterprise application, and with a company background in computer vision, we provide a number of automated analytics services to our customers. Our close working relationships with camera providers mean you can access cameras across as many markets as you need with a single agreement, which provides a quick way to test or scale your project across a state, nationwide, or even globally. Combined with our commitment to providing world-class customer support, it’s easy to see why partners such as Microsoft, iHeartMedia, INRIX, and HERE trust our data and make it a key part of their offerings.
It can take months or even years to get redistribution agreements with each of Vizzion's 200+ imagery providers
Our long-standing working partnerships with camera providers
Our closest partners in the traffic camera data supply chain are the agencies from which we source cameras. We’re proud to work with over 200 departments of transportation to deliver traffic camera data through our products and help deliver imagery from their cameras to a wider audience. Our more than 15 years of experience working with DOTs has given us an understanding of how they operate, and our full-time staff members who are focused on maintaining our relationships with them put us in a position of mutual trust with a massive number of organizations. It can take months or even years to go from initial contact to an executed sourcing contract. Securing access to our on-vehicle camera network was another situation in which maintaining a close relationship with a partner paid off. Although it took nearly ten years of development, discussions, and negotiations, we’re now the only supplier able to both offer live on-vehicle imagery and roadside traffic cameras.
The more providers you can source from, the better your coverage will be - as shown here in Washington, D.C.
Unparalleled coverage across multiple roadside and on-vehicle providers
In our mission to provide the most comprehensive traffic camera database possible to our customers, we work with municipalities, cities, states, provinces, countries, toll roads, and private companies, many of which operate in the same areas as one another. In some cases, markets can have multiple providers offering camera data – we work with eight camera providers in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area alone, and seven in the New York City area. Most of these providers require separate agreements and sourcing processes. Alongside these roadside cameras, we offer exclusive imagery from on-vehicle cameras supplied by our partner. These on-vehicle images provide a novel view of the roadway rarely seen by agency cameras and are integrated into the same feed as our other cameras.
XML feeds from the 3 separate DOTs, each of which supplies camera images and metadata in a different format
A consistent, normalized data feed makes it easy to parse information
With this variety of camera providers comes an equally diverse range of data sources. Many DOTs supply XML feeds which allow us to import data directly from their servers to our database, but each DOT uses a unique schema which requires us to write custom code to parse it into our own data structure. We also normalize each image, adding an appropriate agency logo and copyright notice to ensure that the camera provider is credited for the image while ensuring that the same image format is found across markets for a visually seamless experience.
Some examples of the out-of-service camera images we’re able to detect and filter out
Accurate, constantly updating camera service status detections
One of the more difficult issues to deal with in working with traffic cameras is monitoring their service status. DOTs in many cases are responsible for maintaining thousands of cameras as well as for the upkeep of highways and infrastructure, coordinating public transit, and more; even the most concerted efforts can make it difficult to keep track of in and out of service cameras. Vizzion is able to automatically detect out of service cameras – both still images and streams – using computer vision algorithms that proactively crawl through our database and check each individual camera. When regions are detected as out of service, our full-time content staff are alerted to make the appropriate repairs and manage the support effort on behalf of our clients. In some cases, we’re even able to notify the DOT about outages before they’ve noticed them on their end.
Vizzion's content team is constantly hard at work to keep the database in peak condition
Continuous monitoring for new camera data means a steadily growing database
Our content team does more than just respond to outages. With over 64,000 roadside cameras alone in our database, image and stream links run the risk of becoming obsolete in the case of feed updates or format changes from their providers. We perform daily manual reviews and checks to ensure that our camera data is up to date, comparing our feeds to agency sources using both automated processes and manual tools. This has the additional advantage of allowing us to add any new cameras we may find in the process. Combined with agency data feeds which we can redirect into our system, we are committed to making sure that our database stays in good shape while actively growing.
A sample of some of the camera data provided by Vizzion's XML Web Service
Rich contextual metadata provides invaluable additional information
Camera feeds tell a visual story, but additional information is required to position the data within a greater context. A camera’s name, location, viewpoint, service status, and provider are all vital pieces of information to have in getting the most data as possible out of an image. Each one of our cameras has a rich, constantly-updating set of metadata attached to it which details everything from the camera’s latitude and longitude to the current direction it is facing to even the road segment data nearest to its location. For our on-vehicle cameras, we supply additional data such as vehicle heading and speed, which can be employed for unique use cases such as traffic ground truth and road travel times.
The XML Web Service is exhaustively documented and includes sample applications such as this one
Images, video, and metadata all delivered through a powerful and versatile API
All of this metadata and more is returned via our XML Web Service API. Robust and mature after years of full-time development work, the Web Service allows quick and easy integration of traffic cameras into a variety of applications, providing visual verification of traffic and weather conditions. Based on the highly flexible and robust XML standard and employing a simple, extensively documented schema, the data returned by our Web Service includes camera imagery and streams as well as all of the contextual data added by the camera provider and our content team. For enterprise usage, we also offer the Desktop Video Wall, a turnkey Windows application which can be used to view cameras on a map as well as save shareable video walls each containing up to twenty-five cameras. Whether your use case requires development work or not, Vizzion is able to provide a platform that can scale to your need while delivering quality content.
Historical data can capture rapid weather change better than any other medium
Archived historical imagery tells the whole story of road and weather conditions
While live data is our main offering, we also provide archived historical imagery across some of the largest markets in North America. Our historical image service stores imagery from each camera at an approximately five minute granularity. If you need additional markets or a shorter interval for your use case, no problem – we’re able to expand our collection based on customer demand. From insurance claims investigation to historical weather analysis to creating time-lapse imagery, historical imagery has a wide variety of use cases and is available through our Web Service as well as a standalone History Viewer application for Windows.
Low visibility detections can be displayed as map polygons as well as individual images
Gain access to one of the best visibility detection tools on the market
Vizzion’s engineering department has a strong background in computer vision, and we apply this knowledge to a number of automated image analytics services. Our Low Visibility detection tool, for example, is able to flag camera images that show foggy or otherwise low visibility conditions with a true positive detection rate averaging at 96%. The service is also capable of creating low visibility polygons using more contextual information, which can be plotted on a map to show areas of increased driver risk. These analytics are customizable to different customer use cases and can be tweaked on demand for specific projects; reach out to one of our account representatives for more information.
Vizzion’s service level agreements ensure that you get comprehensive, reliable support by phone and email
Our customer support experts will help you build the best application possible
Developing new products and technologies is important for us, but our main focus at all times is to ensure that our customers are satisfied and using our services as effectively as possible. We provide world-class customer support to our partners; whether they have development questions or want to trial a new use case for traffic cameras, one of our qualified support staff will provide as much assistance as desired. For long-term service over the course of a contract, we can include service level agreements in our licensing terms which guarantee a baseline level of customer support over the lifetime of the product. We even do custom development work for partners with complex new ideas to ensure that they get the absolute most out of our products and services. Our dedication to customer success is why our customers rated our support an average of 9.5 out of 10 in our most recent customer survey.
Vizzion employees can often be found working out solutions to tough customer problems as a team
As twenty-year veterans of the image analysis and traffic camera space, we apply our wealth of experience to ensure that the data and services which we provide to our customers are of paramount quality. We’ve spent over 40,000 hours over the years maintaining good working relationships with roadside camera agencies and on-vehicle providers to ensure that we have steady, diverse sources of camera data, and by continuously normalizing, cleaning, and monitoring our database, we ensure that the feeds our customers receive are as up-to-date as possible. Our API is able to deliver quality-assured camera imagery and video alongside invaluable contextual metadata, and we also offer enterprise software solutions for development-free access to our cameras. Vizzion’s value-added services such as historical imagery and automated image analytics allow for an even wider variety of use cases. All of these services and technologies are made available by a talented team of developers, content engineers, and account representatives who have your best interests in mind as the customer. Our hard work behind the scenes will provide you with the highest quality data and service possible, allowing us to work together and create something valuable.
About Vizzion
Vizzion is the leading provider of road imagery for traffic, weather, road condition, and safety operations and applications. Through partnerships with over 200 different transport agencies and on-vehicle camera providers, Vizzion offers live feeds from over 140,000 cameras in more than 40 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and key markets in South America and Africa. Both on-vehicle and roadside traffic camera services are available through Vizzion’s flexible API and turnkey Video Wall application. Vizzion’s content is trusted by major apps, map providers, broadcasters, fleets, and automotive organizations. Contact busdev@vizzion.com for more information.
Articles
Traffic Cameras: Providing the Whole Picture
Governments around the world spend millions of dollars on implementing and maintaining these traffic cameras because they know that the cameras can help mitigate traffic jams and even save lives.
Vizzion Announces New Platform Providing Massive Network of Live On-Vehicle Imagery
Vizzion's new platform will give access to on-vehicle cameras—producing live imagery as they travel.
Vizzion Uses Image Analysis to Enhance Data Accuracy and Detect Low-Visibility Conditions
Vizzion's image analysis algorithms create a better end-user experience for its customers by detecting and automatically removing bad images, enhancing impaired images, detecting viewpoints, and through other features.
Vizzion Can Detect Areas of Low-Visibility through Image Analysis
Vizzion’s Low Visibility Detection Service scans its network of traffic cameras to detect unsafe driving conditions. The service outputs georeferenced polygons outlining locations of low visibility for use in traffic management centers and mobility apps.