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 * Community
   * Waze Forum
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   * Area Managers
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   * Other Communities
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   * Waze Map Editor
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WAZE BEACONS INSTALLED IN FLANDERS TUNNELS

by Glodenox | Apr 9, 2019

The past few weeks the Flanders road agency Agentschap Wegen & verkeer has
installed Waze Beacons in various tunnels. These devices emit a signal that
allows you to determine your location within a tunnel, where you normally
wouldn’t have any GPS satellite reception. Flanders follows several other
countries in doing so and as such increases the safety of its tunnels by
combating the “tunnel blindness” navigation systems usually experience.



A Waze Beacon, installed on a plate for quick attachment to the tunnel walls.




WAZE BEACONS

Waze beacons are devices that emit a bluetooth signal in its environment. This
signal contains technical data of the state of the beacon as well as a unique
identifier. By installing these beacons in a tunnel at 40 meters distance of
eachother, it becomes possible for a bluetooth receiver (such as a smartphone)
to analyze the signal strength of the several devices and calculate its position
in the tunnel. The only data needed alongside the signal is the approximage
location of each beacon within the tunnel.

This system does not perform a data exchange in two directions. The beacons emit
a signal, but are unable to detect whether someone received it. Bluetooth
pairing is not necessary to read the data sent by the beacons. As such, these
devices can’t be used for calculating the traffic flow by themselves and are
unable to track people individually or otherwise. This means there are no
privacy concerns in this installation.

Waze Mobile Ltd. has partnered with Bluvision to work out this cheap technical
solution for calculating your location. It should be stressed though that this
is an open system that everybody can use! You only need to receive the bluetooth
signals and use the strength of the signals to calculate your position.


INSTALLATION AND ACTIVATION

After the physical installation of the beacons in several tunnels by Agentschap
Wegen & Verkeer, Waze and the local Waze community started with the testing of
the beacons and the activation of the system whenever no problems were found
during the tests. The initial tests of some tunnels took place last weekend and
the results have only been positive so far! In the movie below you can see one
of the tests we did in the Craeybeckxtunnel in Antwerp. You can notice the
location halting for a second or three when entering the tunnel, this due to
stray gps signals still seeping in at the entrance. Once these signals die down,
the beacons are used for navigation, allowing us to calculate the driving speed
just like you could outside a tunnel.

At the moment the Craeybeckxtunnel and Kennedytunnel in Antwerp are active in
Waze, as well as the Vierarmentunnel in Brussels. After the installation and
successful tests, the other tunnels will also become active in the app.



Note: the yellow arrow is an indication of the raw gps location. This is of
course not present when using the app normally.


COST

The Waze Beacons cost around € 8.000 for all tunnels combined. The installation
itself increases the cost to about € 30.000. For your information: Waze does not
earn any money in this. The beacons are bought directly at the supplier
Bluvision, with which Waze has worked out this technical solution. Waze did help
with the technical information needed for the installation, but did this without
asking any money. After the installation, the local Waze Community helped
testing the installed beacons for Waze. Alternative systems that allow devices
to calculate their location cost several times as much to eventually achieve the
same result.

 

We would like to thank everybody who contributed to the success of this project.
In particular we’d like to thank Agentschap Wegen & Verkeer for agreeing to buy
and install these beacons. Also Peter van der Veen of the local Waze Community
deserves recognition for this as he guided the communication and testing of the
system. Thank you all!



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