StreetLight Data taps into vast computing and mobile data resources
Mobility data analytics company StreetLight Data has closed a series D funding round of $15m which, it said, would help it to transform transportation analytics with big data for the pandemic era.
Macquarie Capital and Activate Capital joined existing investors Osage University Partners and Ajax Investment Strategies. The new round brings together world leaders in infrastructure investing and clean technology.
New features
StreetLight CEO Laura Schewel told Smart Cities World that the company is working on a string of new features and products that will help the transportation industry continue its transformation to a data-driven framework. “With the likes of our recently launched Viz3d visualisations, multi-modal mobility and street safety metrics, and generally ways to help planners do their work in a budget-constrained pandemic environment,” she said.
She added that the funding would allow it to “build a broader team with broader reach. And tap into a global network seeking innovation at the intersection of infrastructure and technology, and continue to scale.”
StreetLight combines machine learning with deep transportation knowledge and vast computing and mobile data resources to provide near-instant insights for virtually every road and block in North America. It allows agencies to automate and scale data collection, modernise investment decisions and lever up their efficiency, while keeping people and goods moving.
Population growth and congestion, changing commute patterns, and the rise of new mobility are placing new demands on transportation agencies already balancing budget pressures. These have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, introducing a new level of travel volatility and forcing the industry to measure and manage more complex systems, with reduced resources and much of its staff working remotely.
“Governments, engineering firms and new mobility companies need better information at a time of remote operations, increased transportation volatility and decreased budgets”
“Just as e-commerce, web conferencing and telemedicine companies have enabled life to continue in a socially distanced world, so has StreetLight enabled critical transportation planning to weather the pandemic era,” continued Schewel.
She added: “Governments, engineering firms and new mobility companies need better information at a time of remote operations, increased transportation volatility and decreased budgets. The only way to do that is to replace expensive and highly manual transportation measurement approaches with on-demand metrics.”
As well as transportation strategies, StreetLight’s mobility data is already being used to inform decisions in the wider smart city picture in areas such as the environment.
“Given the degree to which mobility impacts our lives, we see new applications all the time. Such as recent research into mobility’s relationship to the spread of disease, enabling new working and lifestyle models,” explained Schewel.
“We also see a transformation in ways data is applied to the entire infrastructure lifecycle – from conception and planning to permitting, design, maintenance, operations and performance monitoring – which will impact how we think about the possibilities opened up by smarter cities.”
Jared Doskow, managing director at investor Macquarie Capital Principal Finance, said: “What impressed us about StreetLight was its ability to innovate and build meaningful insights from a rapidly expanding base of data. We expect that those insights will have broad application and deliver significant value across multiple industries.”
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