Microsoft Case Studies

Microsoft and the Federal University of Minas Gerais help predict traffic jams

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities and suburbs, and as just about any of these billions of people can tell you, urban traffic can be a nightmare. Cars stack up bumper-to-bumper, clogging our highways, jangling our nerves, taxing our patience, polluting our air, and taking a toll on our productivity. In short, traffic jams impair on our emotional, physical, and economic well-being.

A study by the Brazilian National Association of Public Transport showed that the country’s traffic exacted an economic toll of about US$7.2 million in 1998. Unfortunately, it’s only getting worse; there are now about three times as many vehicles in Brazil, making traffic exponentially worse, according to Fernando de Oliveira Pessoa, a traffic expert in Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s sixth-largest city.

Microsoft Research has joined forces with the Federal University of Minas Gerais, home to one of Brazil’s foremost computer science programs, to tackle the seemingly intractable problem of traffic jams. The immediate objective of this research is to predict traffic conditions over the next 15 minutes to an hour, so that drivers can be forewarned of likely traffic snarls.

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