Waze and Esri Partnership: Made App-to-Infrastructure Possible

With the technological advancements happening everywhere, Waze and Esri teamed up to provide a more sophisticated navigation tool to its users.

Esri - ArcGIS uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to connect people with maps, data and apps accessible anytime and anywhere.

Through Esri's GIS, businesses now have the capability to determine retail locations, real estate hot zones and growth trends in real time. Local and National government can now create real-world context visualizations for conducting analysis, plan emergency response and generate simulations.

On the other hand, the Waze app provides drivers around the world with a  GPS-based geographical navigation app. Drivers passively supply traffic and other road data such as vehicle accidents, police traps, or any road hazards along the way. These give other Waze users near the area a warning on what's ahead of them.

Geographic navigation is not new to both Esri and Waze. But issues arise on Waze's resource constraints, faced with limitations on time, money and technology in municipalities. Meanwhile, Ezri's software is being used by the Cities as a system of record with limited capabilities of disseminating data to the public.

Andrew Stauffer, Product Manager of Civic Technology at Esri, explained how Esri was able to point its limitations, "A community we were working with said, 'You guys make some amazing maps and great analysis software, but how do we get the data out there into the public? They're relying on apps to do navigation.' Helping that city solve that problem is how we got introduced to Waze."

Stauffer described the partnership as "taking the firehose of information from Waze and turning it into action." Municipalities can take Waze reports of roadside accidents and dispatch emergency vehicles and tweak traffic light timing when traffic jam has been detected.

In privacy and security's concern, Waze preserves the anonymity of its data to fully protect its users. And the data being shared by Esri and the municipalities through its software is open data.

With these useful features of Waze and Esri, having both in one app would be immensely functional for their users. The app-to-infrastructure system created through Waze-Esri partnership will provide utmost accuracy in traffic reports and a more reliable maps for drivers.