Providing road users with dynamic, customisable digital maps and time-critical notifications
We built VicTraffic, a digital mapping system that gives Victorian road users fast, reliable information about emergencies, road closures and safer routes, even when connectivity is patchy.
Image 1: The VicTraffic web app displays road disruptions on a map so travellers can quickly identify the emergencies, road closures or disruptions that could affect their journey. Each disruption is identified by clear symbols. Users can click on a disruption to read its exact location and the status of the road. They can click through to another screen for more detailed information.
The challenge
The challenge: getting time-critical data to consumers who need it most.
The Victorian Department of Transport and Planning engaged Symbiote to develop VicTraffic to give Victorian road users reliable digital road maps that notify them of any disruptions to routes. Showing safer routes is particularly important during critical incidents such as natural disasters or emergencies. The system must continue to work at times or locations when mobile connectivity is unreliable.
The VicTraffic website is the official source of planned and unplanned disruptions and emergency traffic information in Victoria. It’s essential that it remains a trusted source of information, as failures in service delivery can erode trust in government capabilities, which could have serious consequences during large-scale and life-threatening emergencies.
Road users increasingly rely on online maps to make decisions about travel routes. Popular digital mapping options only have information from a limited range of sources and most only show a few of any current disruptions. VicTraffic needed to give drivers a reliable and immediately understandable map-based road information system showing everyday and emergency disruptions to roads in Victoria and across the NSW and South Australian borders.
The new system needed to:
be scalable to manage significant changes in the number of users
be highly performant to ensure it remained functional during emergencies – even for users with limited or patchy internet connections
have disaster recovery strategies in place so it was never offline.
Image 2: People using the VicTraffic web app can select areas to create watchlists that list and trigger notifications about any road disruptions or closures in those areas.
What we did
Effective project management
We applied our flexible and responsive Agile ways of working to reduce delays and keep the project running on time.
Our embedded teams approach, in which we place our experts within client teams, streamlined the project, improved communication and enhanced the teams’ capabilities and leadership skills.
Proven solution architecture
Our repeatable methodology is an efficient way to identify and integrate diverse data sources using cloud services like AWS, to ensure scalability and security.
Short-duration proof-of-concepts were used to quickly test and refine technological solutions, ensuring they meet the real-time needs of consumers and are robust enough to deal with tech spikes.
Seamless APIs & integration
The integration of advanced technologies such as microservices, API management and cloud-based hosting ensures efficient handling of large and varied data sources.
“We managed data from state, local government and other organisations - pulling together over 20 data information sources, enabling Victorians to find information about road access across borders into NSW, the ACT and South Australia, as well as roads managed by councils, and in parks, forests and reserves.”
Personalised development
Performance optimisation was achieved by designing infrastructure capable of high performance under load, utilising local and cloud-based resources to ensure seamless service delivery.
Sitecore XM Cloud was used to support content and onboard users and enable them to create new accounts and set up preferences and watchlists so they could view notifications and emergency alerts on any digital device.
Image 3: Memory and performance testing ensured VicTraffic would perform seamlessly under significant changes in load.
Easy-to-manage Progressive Web App
Rather than building and maintaining an IOS app and an Android app plus a website, we developed VicTraffic as a Progressive Web App (PWA). The PWA functions on any digital device like a native app, giving users a convenient, personalised and easy-to-access tool while significantly reducing the costs of building and maintaining separate native apps.
Image 4: Users can add a link to the VicTraffic web app via their digital device’s home screen, rather than downloading it. When the link is selected, VicTraffic opens in the device’s web browser. Users can opt to receive push notifications about road disruptions that appear on their device even when the VicTraffic web app is closed.
Flexible hosting
Serverless computing was implemented to reduce system overhead and improve scalability during high-demand periods.
Iron-clad testing
The quality of the product was ensured through in-sprint testing on every feature as it was developed, supporting user acceptance testing (UAT), and integration, accessibility, performance and security testing.
Government-level security
We implemented robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and comply with governmental security standards.
Proactive application support
Our team provides 24/7/365 support to immediately respond to any issues and maintain service continuity and reliability. We have an ongoing relationship with client support teams and pro-actively work with third-party vendors when needed.
“We’ve honed our application support process over 15+ years of supporting critical government projects that serve millions of users each year.”
Site performance is monitored and managed in real time through various analytics and reporting tools. Application performance and infrastructure monitoring are integrated at multiple tiers throughout the solution, so admins have timely, interrogable and actionable data points they need to make informed decisions.
The whole team is committed to documenting issues and fixes, so knowledge is maintained.
Our support is proactive: solutions are regularly updated and refined based on feedback and any emerging needs.
The result
The result: optimisable journeys available to road users at all times.
VicTraffic’s new digital road mapping system gives all road users an easy and reliable way to stay updated about road closures.
Planned and real-time road closure updates are sourced from a broader set of data sets providing direct-to-user updates of changes ahead of time and as they occur.
Periods of high demand are managed effortlessly via scalable AWS infrastructure and resilient data ingestion and transformation engines – these give users information even during high-load periods.
Road users can see disruption information and alerts on any digital device – even when they are in areas with poor internet connectivity.
Accessibility has been prioritised, so users who rely on accessibility tools can get the information they need quickly.
Users can create watchlists to prioritise the areas, searches and types of information they care about – and create accounts so they can receive notifications on any digital device.
Site performance can be monitored and managed in real time.
The solution integrates with social media platforms, enabling social media updates to be quickly generated and published so notifications about road closures or disruptions reach people who aren’t using the VicTraffic site.
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