TCS, Gfi Informatique unveil smart city solution in France

Country's largest software services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Gfi Informatique today unveiled a smart solution for optimising Belfort's (France) urban bus transportation.
The solution, which uses big data analytics, is a collaboration between the city's Board of Public Transportation, Gfi Informatique and TCS.
It will support Belfort's smart city strategy, which aims to help local authorities deploy digital transformation projects, TCS said in a statement.
The companies are deploying TCS' Intelligent Urban Exchange software to help the city administrators and public transportation planners make more informed decisions through insights from historical and real time data.
Both companies have worked with the city to enhance the capture and treatment of large amounts of information using big data analytics solutions designed specifically to help public sector customers, with the overall goal of driving further digital innovation across the city, it added.

As a mid-sized city with a population of just over 50,000, Belfort is deploying advanced technologies to improve city services.
"The results were very conclusive. The experiment allowed us to optimise our transportation network and realise savings. It was such a big success that it could be duplicated to improve not only transportation but also other major city services such as water, waste collection and electricity," Yannick Monnier, the Director of the Board of Public Transportation of Belfort, said.
The 'Proof of Concept' spans across detection of network congestion points and putting in place appropriate changes, passenger flow as well as density on particular routes.