Valerann: Meet the smart transportation startup that is empowering road operators with intelligent data

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By integrating disruptive technologies including AI, machine learning and big data analytics with open source data feeds such as navigation apps, IoT sensors, social media and connected vehicles, a wealth of data-rich information can be at the disposal of road operators. Valerann is at the forefront of providing this to its customers, but who is the company, and what makes its solution so innovative? Here CEO and Co-Founder of Valerann Gabriel Jacobson answers some of these questions.  

What does Valerann do, and what solutions does it offer?

Valerann is an AI startup that provides an innovative software solutions to the smart transportation industry – Lanternn by Valerann™ – that uses AI to fuse various data sources and provide a comprehensive picture of road conditions, empowering road network operators and traffic control centres with intelligent traffic management data. 

Our solution gives certainty to road operators about road conditions and infrastructure in real-time and helps them make more informed decisions.  

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Recently Valerann has put more and more of its focus on developing  AI based software solutions rather than hardware data-generation solutions; what triggered this transformation?

In recent years, we have seen an acceleration in the development of disruptive technologies such as AI, machine learning, big data analytics, and cloud computing. Moreover, the vast variety of  traffic related data sources such as navigation apps, IoT sensors, social media, and connected vehicles are growing consistently. After being deeply involved in the world of traffic data generation, it was a natural progression for Valerann to turn to these evolving technologies and data sources to enhance our product offering and provide a complete solution to our customers. As a conclusion, we have developed Valerann's proprietary Data Fusion Engine, which combines and analyses various data sources to provide a complete picture of road conditions to city and highway authorities.     

What is Valerann’s proprietary Data Fusion Engine? 

The data fusion engine is at the core of our new product, Lanternn by Valerann™. It combines, analyses, and organises data from various sources using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data gathering and analysis to accurately picture the road infrastructure and conditions like traffic, incidents and disruptions.  

What is Lanternn by Valerann™? What does it do?

Lanternn by Valerann™ is a fully modular intelligent road traffic management solution used by road network operators to provide a comprehensive picture of traffic behaviour. Albeit the vast amount of traffic data that’s available out there, road operators typically either have access to a limited amount of this data, or have limited to no ability to make sense of those mountains of data. Lanternn by Valerann™ uses the Data Fusion Engine, powered by the most state of the art artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics to  fuse those data sources in a way that can actually support decision making processes of our clients as opposed to simple integration. The system combines various data sources such as weather, navigation, IoT sensors, social media, and connected vehicles to give road network operators a clear picture of road conditions. It helps operators make faster, better, and more effective decisions. Lanternn by Valerann™ is also a modular SaaS solution, which allows us to easily tailor the service to each specific client and solve many different pain points from the same platform. 

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How does it contribute to making roads safer, reducing congestion, lowering emissions and increasing sustainability?

Studies have shown that traffic congestion contributes to pollution in and around cities and towns and increases the number of accidents and casualties.  

Our solution provides road operators certainty with a simple, easy to read view of road conditions via a virtual control centre. The virtual control centre assists road operators in monitoring and responding rapidly to events like traffic congestion, incidents, or compromised infrastructures. 

Road operators can help reduce congestion and accidents by responding quickly to events or avoiding some events from happening. In turn, it minimises the impact on the environment and contributes to safer roads. 

What makes your solution unique from that of your competitors?

Our unique value proposition lies within our powerful Data Fusion Engine, which allows, for the first time, a deep intelligent fusion of all available data sources and contextualise them to support real time decision making processes. But there’s more - we understand that data technologies are not available today to the vast majorities of roads, which bears dire consequences. Therefore, we have designed, Lanternn by Valerann™  to be a scalable, cost-effective, solution that will allow comprehensive view of road conditions to road operators with limited budget and resources. For larger road operators, our traffic management system can be used, in part or as a whole, to enhance their existing traffic management capabilities through our advanced technology capabilities. 

How is Valerann planning to use the $17 million it recently raised during the Series A round?

We recently announced that we had received Series A funding. The round was led by HG Ventures, the corporate venture arm of The Heritage Group, and previous investors RIO Ventures Holdings and 2B Angels also participated in this round.

We are excited to have received this new funding; this will allow us to grow the company and enhance our new product – Lanternn by Valerann™ – to accelerate its implementation in the UK, Europe, and the Americas. 

Our vision is for Lanternn by Valerann™ to become an intelligent transportation software as a service (SaaS) solution that helps city and highway authorities make more informed decisions around traffic management, no matter their size or budget.

What is next for Valerann?

A. We launched Lanternn by Valerann™ in September 2021. Our focus and attention will be on collaborating with strategic partners, highway authorities, cities, governmental organisations and other potential customers to secure a strong foothold in the UK, Europe and the Americas.