The DbD project has evolved as planned, in Phase 1, as the Feasibility Study reports:
• Market Study: Estimated total number of road concessions in the world in 2018 (1760), and growth rate since 2005 (4,4% p.a.). Each concession spends 21.4 M€/year in traffic forecasts and monitoring (total market 38 million €/year). If we include roads with only heavy traffic tolled, and specific non-tolled roads that experience congestion, total market can duplicate. It will be easy to develop a similar Top-App for public transport concessions, multiplying business total market.
• IP strategy: justifying why patenting is not the way to go, and referring steps to protect algorithm, such as confidentiality measures, trade secret and copyright. The Freedom to Operate analysis concluded positively.
• Partial fine-tuning of the prototype, and technical validation/auditing, done by EXACTO together with IST-UL. Tests included producing daily traffic forecasts for 25 Abril bridge (Lisbon), 365 days/2018. Results were good, confirming accuracy and efficiency of the prototype.
• Meetings: our E.U. coach met with partners and team involved in project. It was clear the advantage to prepare Top-App for additional features, namely production of hourly traffic for each day/coming week and using it as tool to measure impacts of specific events/changes in context (including toll tariffs).
Lusoponte/Ascendi agreed in second financial support, increasing private funding in the project to 40.000€ at this stage, with possible additional funding in Ph2, to complement SMEi.
The dissemination of these results was not considered advantageous, at this stage, as confidentiality is relevant for the success of the project.
