Software solutions for [enter subject name here]

Traffic Jams!

Ecogeek reported yesterday on a company called INRIX and how their traffic database could potentially save a bit of the planet. And oil and money.

Collectively, we spend a huge amount of money and expend a huge amount of co2 during traffic jams that could be someway addressed using hardware/software in your car communicating with centralised software which can alert all other cars with similar hardware/software to potential traffic jams and their avoidance by plotting routes around the areas.

Be great if it worked in Dublin and Cork etc. but the software/hardware would have to be fairly special given our infrastructure and use of cars (apparently 60% of cars parked in Dublin are civil servants'). The machines would have to wake us up earlier, tell our bosses to allow us to go home earlier, sort us out when a wheelbarrow overturns on the M50...

You can post questions on the ecogeek site if you have any - the owner is going to interview the CEO of INRIX in the near future.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1658/69/

People attemting to use software to solve chaotic systems always wrecks my head. They're welcome to try, but I won't be holding my breath.

Is Microsoft the operating platform?

Okay forget my question. Found this.

I can just see it now: you're stuck in the middle of nowhere thanks to your new computer and it's just crashed. "Cannot connect to the internet. Would you like to connect to the internet to see if this problem can be resolved?"

Hermes wrote:Okay forget my question. Found this.

I can just see it now: you're stuck in the middle of nowhere thanks to your new computer and it's just crashed. "Cannot connect to the internet. Would you like to connect to the internet to see if this problem can be resolved?"

You may have been wise enough to hold on to your fold-out map. Just in case the very unlikely event you describe above was to occur.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Hermes wrote:Okay forget my question. Found this.

I can just see it now: you're stuck in the middle of nowhere thanks to your new computer and it's just crashed. "Cannot connect to the internet. Would you like to connect to the internet to see if this problem can be resolved?"

You may have been wise enough to hold on to your fold-out map. Just in case the very unlikely event you describe above was to occur.

Lol. The map would be very handy so long as you know where you are. The HELP function on your system might put you beyond rational thought though and beyond caring where you are. I know, I've been there many times

microsoft are coming out with prog called clearflow to do just that, but it won't work there never enough alternative routes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7475986.stm

We might be seeing the end of internet names like www.machinenation.forumakers.com and instead start to see

Machine Nation
Politics Dot IE
The CLR
Ard Taoiseach Homepage...

A complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet has been given the go-ahead in Paris.

The net's regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called "top-level" domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.

A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in scripts, such as Asian and Arabic, was also approved.

"We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated," said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

About shaggin time

lostexpectation wrote:microsoft are coming out with prog called clearflow to do just that, but it won't work there never enough alternative routes.

Visions of that paper clip appearing in the middle of a traffic jam. "Looks like you are trying to find your way to Istanbul? Do you need some help"?



I think they killed the clip off, shame really it was so so Microsoft.

Squire wrote:

lostexpectation wrote:microsoft are coming out with prog called clearflow to do just that, but it won't work there never enough alternative routes.

Visions of that paper clip appearing in the middle of a traffic jam. "Looks like you are trying to find your way to Istanbul? Do you need some help"?



I think they killed the clip off, shame really it was so so Microsoft.

No, no shame at all. It was for the good of humanity that the clip was snipped. That arrogant little prick was the bane of word processors and office workers everywhere.

Renewable Energy World are reporting that software used in Germany can reliably predict upto 4 days of wind power in advance.

Thanks to a new system developed by a German university spin-off, it's now possible to obtain an accurate forecast of the energy output from wind parks for up to ten days in advance.

The Previento system, developed at Oldenburg University in northern Germany in cooperation with researchers from Denmark's Riso National Laboratory, can predict not only how much electricity a specific wind park in Germany will produce but also the total amount of electricity the 20,000 or so wind parks dotted around the country will generate in the coming days and with a high level of accuracy.

Armed with these predictions, Germany's grid operators can now calculate the amount of additional electricity they will need from fossil-fuel plants to compensate for troughs in wind output — and so ensure the expected power demand is covered reliably.

Why they need it is another question for me - if their fossil-fuel burning stations are sensitive to electricity already in the grid don't they switch off or turn themselves down? At present it wouldn't seem so if this is anything to go by..

"The German electricity industry has to able to plan today how much electricity it will need tomorrow as well as how that electricity will be produced. That is what our system helps them to do," Dr. Matthias Lange from energy & meteo systems, the Oldenburg spin-off, said.

"Accurate predictions about wind power allow grid operators to save millions of euros through efficient scheduling," he added.

A system that can predict how much electricity is going to be available from wind power for the national grid has become so important in Germany because wind's share of the country's electricity generation is growing all the time, and reshaping the electricity industry.

The Germans have put a lot of effort into their wind program and currently get over 7% of their electricity from wind and they're adamant to make it grow according to this

Wind power accounted for 7.2 percent of Germany's total electricity consumption at the end of 2007 with 22,200 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity.

According to the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), installed capacity is set to double by 2020 with 45,000 MW installed on land and 10,000 MW offshore.

In fact, the BWE estimates that every fourth kilowatt hour of electricity will be coming from wind power within 12 years.

Wind, they think will be this important

"The amount of wind power used today in Germany is so big that all the other types of power plants have to adapt themselves around the wind power output and increase or decrease their contribution depending on what wind does," said Lange.

Because Previento can give plenty of warning about big deviations and sudden peaks and troughs in wind power output, it also plays a big role in the regional energy spot markets. The amount of wind power entering the grid impacts electricity prices: the more wind power available, the lower the electricity price becomes, Lange explained. This is because less conventional energy has to be purchased by energy providers for the next few days to cover the expected demand.

So how does it work? Sensors everywhere around the place ..

The system calculates the amount of wind available at any particular location using a variety of weather models available from multiple weather services. The German Weather Services, for example, supplies information on wind speed, wind direction, pressure and a vertical temperature profile for rectangular grids with a resolution of 7 kilometers.

Previento processes this data and combines it with data about the features of local terrain of a wind park, such as the amount of wooded area or the bodies of water around a wind park to form an accurate estimation of the electricity output at any given time.

The system is proving a global hit with interest in it coming from Spain, Scandinavia, America, Canada and Ireland.