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Yala Province Municipality has the distinction of being the first administrative zone in Thailand to harness the power of mobility big data and movement intelligence to control the spread of COVID-19.
On August 16, 2021, the Digital Economy Promotion Agency or "depa" under the leadership of Dr. Supakorn Siddhichai, Executive Vice President, together with the Mayor of Yala Province, Mr. Pongsak Yingchoncharoen made the decision to partner with San Francisco-based mobility intelligence company, CITYDATA.ai to apply the power of mobility big data and AI to deal with the COVID-19 situation in Yala Municipality in Thailand.
CITYDATA volunteered to provide the CITYDASH.ai platform to help the supervisors and the public health administrators of Yala Province in Thailand in the form of a free trial, followed by a paid monthly subscription for a period of 1 year. The CITYDASH platform curates crowdsourced mobility data, aggregates and analyzes the density and movement patterns, and measures the travel fluctuations relative to the lockdown measures within Yala Province.
Mayor Pongsak Yingchoncharoen of Yala Province commented that "CITYDATA provides an interesting technology combined with the power of artificial intelligence for the greater good. In today's society, all decisions must be based on information and knowledge. Crowdsourced mobility data reveals the movement patterns of people. This helps us to enforce time restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the infection rate. Such cloud-based data services will be used by Yala Province for addressing the COVID-19 situation. The municipality also intends to continue to use CITYDATA's technology to analyze mobility data patterns for economic rehabilitation, public transportation, and urban development within Yala Province."
CITYDATA has set up an entire team of cloud technologists and data scientists in Thailand to support this important initiative. Punnapats "AiR" Thitiwisarnwong who heads up the customer success efforts for CITYDATA in Thailand said, “Our data quantifies the mobility patterns. We can run digital surveys to show the time series trend before and after each lockdown announcement made by the Mayor. Our analysis confirms that people are willing to cooperate and comply with the movement control orders and public health mandates, for the greater good of everyone who lives in Yala."
"Yala Province is a technology trailblazer," said Dr. Supakorn Siddhichai of depa, whose team has been collaborating with CITYDATA since the start of the pandemic. "The methodologies and best practices put in place by Yala in partnership with CITYDATA are extensible and re-usable for the benefit of all the other provinces across Thailand," added Dr. Supakorn.
"I am really glad to see Yala Province becoming the first smart city in Thailand that uses our mobility big data and AI technology to create a smarter, safer, and more resilient community", said Apurva "Apu" Kumar, CEO of CITYDATA. "This aligns perfectly with CITYDATA's objectives of making the latest technologies accessible and easy to use for city administrators around the world. While we are a US-based company, we are very focused on helping cities, districts, provinces, government agencies, and mobility operators in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia”, added Mr. Kumar.
You can watch the recorded "Facebook Live" session by Mayor Pongsak Yingchoncharoen at the below link:
Mayor of Yala Province on Facebook Live:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?extid=CL-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&v=3094008257555397
Additional coverage by DEPA Thailand and Smart City Thailand can also be found at the links below.
depa Government of Thailand News Release:
https://www.depa.or.th/th/article-view/20210817_02
Smart City Thailand Write-up:
http://smartcitythailand.com/depa-with-yala-and-citydata-drive-mobility-intelligence-usage-via-citydash-platform/
About CITYDATA.ai
CITYDATA.ai provides pattern-of-life mobility data + Ai for smart cities. CITYDATA knows the answers to the questions “how many people are in your city today” and “what are their movement patterns?”.
CITYDATA offers five main data-as-a-service products:
- CITYDASH: on-demand daily mobility insights for global cities across 60 countries
- CITYCHAT: mobile chatbot platform for citizen engagement and data sharing
- CITYFLOW: fleet tracking solution for cities, transportation, and enterprise businesses
- CITYWORKS: mobile workforce management solution for cities and businesses
- CITYSDK: an embeddable component for cities to use in their mobile apps
Founded in 2020 in San Francisco, California, CITYDATA provides fresh, accurate, daily insights that are essential for smart city programs, economic development, urban planning, mobility and transportation, tourism, disaster impact analysis, sustainability, and resilience.
You can reach the company via email at business@citydata.ai if you’d like to discuss your data needs and use cases. You can also follow the company on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the UniverCity.ai blog to stay updated on the newest innovations in mobility data + Ai.