The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and the Open Transport Partnership have launched the new transportation data standard and platform ‘SharedStreets’.

SharedStreets will enable the cities to work and exchange information with companies to manage streets, reduce traffic-related deaths and prepare for new technological advancements implemented in cities’ transportation networks.

The development of this solution was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

NACTO chair and Bloomberg Associates principal Janette Sadik-Khan said: “The coming autonomous revolution must also be a revolution for cities.

“Data will be the most efficient path between two points in the age of autonomous urbanism. SharedStreets will help cities understand their transportation networks and make sure their residents get the most from their streets.”

Compatible with any sources of street data, the solution is expected to provide a new, global, non-proprietary system for describing streets.

“The coming autonomous revolution must also be a revolution for cities.”

The data standard emphasises on unique, simplified, intersection-to-intersection characteristics instead of relying on a full, complex base map.

Furthermore, the SharedStreets data commons offers a neutral, anonymised clearinghouse for data to ensure that multiple streams of street-level information procured by transportation providers, tech companies and government agencies are available for analysis, traffic planning and street designing.

The analysis is also expected to facilitate the development of new technologies.

The platform currently focuses on traffic safety, real-time traffic monitoring and curb management functions, all of which can be rapidly deployed in cities worldwide as they sign on to the SharedStreets platform.

SharedStreets aims to convert disparate transportation data from public and private sector sources into a mutually readable and shared global standard to digitally describe every aspect of city streets.

It is hosted on Github, a repository of open-source software.