FAQs about
PTV Flows

PTV Flows is a cloud-based traffic monitoring and prediction software that provides real-time insights and historical into current road conditions and forecasts traffic up to 60 minutes in advance. It combines high-quality floating car data, maps, and advanced algorithms to help cities, traffic operators, and mobility planners detect congestion, predict incidents, and optimize traffic flow. 

With automated monitoring and customizable KPIs, PTV Flows supports smarter and more efficient traffic management.

PTV Flows achieves scalability for city-wide traffic monitoring and traffic analysis through its cloud-native architecture. It processes large volumes of floating car data in real time, ensuring consistent performance even across extensive metropolitan networks.

The system uses adaptive algorithms and distributed computing to deliver accurate traffic forecasts with minimal latency. Flexible configuration options allow operators to expand monitoring zones, integrate APIs, and adjust KPIs without additional on-premise infrastructure.

PTV Flows integrates floating car data (FCD) from major vendors and multiple sources to deliver real-time traffic visualization across urban and regional networks. The system continuously processes GPS-based vehicle trajectories, allowing it to estimate speeds, detect congestion, and identify incidents dynamically.

Coverage is extensive, spanning major roads and arterial networks, and can be expanded based on data subscriptions. Advanced map-matching and filtering algorithms ensure accurate representation of traffic conditions in near real time, enabling operators to make informed traffic management decisions.

PTV Flows leverages a combination of high-quality traffic data sources like TomTom FCD for real-time vehicle trajectories, while mapping platforms such as MapBox and PTV ModelToGo supply up-to-date road network information. The system fuses these inputs with advanced algorithms for speed estimation, congestion detection, and route-level traffic forecasting. 

Continuous updates ensure that both traffic data and maps reflect current conditions, enabling reliable city-wide analysis and predictive modeling.

PTV Flows provides global geographic coverage by leveraging extensive floating car data and detailed road network maps. Its cloud-native architecture ensures that traffic monitoring and predictive analytics can scale seamlessly from small municipalities to large metropolitan areas. 

Adaptive algorithms allow the system to maintain real-time performance across thousands of kilometers of roads, while flexible configuration options let operators define monitoring zones, KPIs, and integration points without additional infrastructure. This combination of broad coverage and scalable design enables consistent, high-resolution traffic insights across diverse regions.

PTV Flows maintains up-to-date traffic modeling through regular map updates. Road network data, sourced from platforms like MapBox and ModelToGo, is refreshed on a scheduled basis to reflect changes in road geometry, new infrastructure, and traffic regulations. 

Updates are processed automatically in the cloud, ensuring that both real-time monitoring and predictive algorithms operate on the most current network information. This continuous refresh minimizes discrepancies between observed traffic conditions and the system’s digital map representation ensuring data continuity and the consistency of the selected corridor KPIs without any human intervention

PTV Flows provides short-term traffic forecasts with a prediction horizon of up to 60 minutes, using real-time floating car data and advanced predictive algorithms. Traffic conditions are updated continuously, typically with minimal latency, allowing operators to respond quickly to congestion or incidents.

Compared to traditional monitoring systems, which may rely on sensors with a slower refresh update, PTV Flows delivers near-instantaneous updates and predictive insights across the entire monitored network, ensuring more proactive and accurate traffic management.

PTV Flows leverages AI and machine learning traffic forecasting to deliver highly accurate real-time and short-term traffic predictions and alerts. Machine learning algorithms analyze large volumes of floating car data, historical traffic patterns, and network conditions to identify congestion trends and predict incident impacts. 

Compared to statistical predictions or traditional methods, PTV Flows’ predictive models adapt dynamically to changing traffic conditions, reducing errors and latency in forecasts. This ensures operators have reliable insights for proactive traffic management and optimization across the monitored network.

PTV Flows delivers predictive email and GUI notifications on KPI critical conditions that automatically inform operators of emerging congestion, incidents, or abnormal traffic patterns. 

Its monitoring system continuously evaluates traffic flows against user-defined thresholds, triggering alerts without manual intervention. 

By automating these processes, operators can focus on decision-making rather than data collection, enabling faster responses and more efficient traffic management across city-wide networks.

PTV Flows supports historical data analysis and traffic replay, allowing operators to review past traffic conditions in detail. Using recorded floating car data and KPI metrics, the system reconstructs traffic flows, identifies recurring congestion patterns, and evaluates the impact of incidents or interventions. 

This functionality helps traffic engineers validate predictive models, optimize signal timings, and improve long-term planning by providing actionable insights from past traffic behavior.

PTV Flows allows operators to create and use custom  corridor metrics as current , average and unusual travel times , tailored to specific city or network requirements. 

Flexible monitoring zones can be configured at any granularity, from individual intersections to entire metropolitan areas enabling targeted analysis and reporting. This configurability ensures that traffic performance metrics are aligned with operational objectives and facilitates focused, data-driven decision-making.

PTV Flows provides robust integration capabilities with existing traffic control systems (ATMS), including platforms like Econolite Centracs^®. Using standardized APIs and real-time data exchange protocols, it can send and receive traffic data, alerts, and metrics. 

This enables seamless coordination between predictive traffic analytics and operational systems, allowing traffic operators to implement adaptive signal control, incident response, and network-wide optimization without modifying existing infrastructure.

The PTV Flows Restful API delivers both real-time and historical traffic data, including vehicle speeds, congestion levels, incident reports, and predictive forecasts.

Developers and system integrators can access this data in structured and well known formats like JSON, protobuf, csv and parquet, enabling integration with dashboards, traffic management systems, or third-party applications. This flexibility allows users to build custom analytics, visualize traffic trends, and incorporate predictive insights directly into operational workflows.

The PTV Flows API is designed for system integrators, developers, and traffic analysts who need access to real-time and historical traffic data. It enables integrators to connect PTV Flows with existing traffic management systems, developers to build custom applications or dashboards, and analysts to perform advanced traffic modeling and performance evaluation. 

The API’s structured endpoints and standardized data formats ensure seamless integration and efficient workflow automation across different user groups.

Access to the PTV Flows API is protected through API key authentication, ensuring that only authorized users and applications can retrieve real-time or historical traffic data. 

Each API key is unique and can be managed or revoked by administrators, providing secure and controlled access. Combined with HTTPS encryption, this approach safeguards data integrity and privacy while enabling safe integration with external systems.

Most of the PTV Flows APIS are pull based and support a machine-to-machine (M2M) data retrieval, enabling automated exchange of real-time and historical traffic data with other systems.

Currently PTV Flows can send alerts by email, and such emails can be used to trigger other workflows (like sending messages to the citizens or publishing Flows data on VMS). 

Yes, PTV Flows is a cloud-based SaaS solution, requiring no installation on local servers. Its architecture allows scalable cloud traffic management, processing large volumes of real-time and historical traffic data without burdening local IT infrastructure. 

Operators benefit from automatic updates, centralized data management, and seamless access from any location. Compared to traditional on-premise systems, the cloud approach ensures faster deployment, elastic scalability for city-wide networks, and easier integration with APIs and third-party systems. It also means that the customers do not have to worry about cloud cost or IT maintenance reducing effectevly the total cost of the ownership of the solution

PTV Flows runs entirely in modern web browsers, requiring WebGL support for interactive map rendering and real-time visualization.

• Recommended browser is Edge but it can run usually also on Chrome (despite it is not officially supported).
• A standard desktop or laptop with a multi-core processor, 8 GB RAM
• A stable internet connection to handle real-time data streams.

This ensures smooth operation of dashboards, traffic replay, and predictive analytics without the need for additional software installation.

PTV Flows offers flexible subscription plans tailored to different operational needs. There are different sizes that allow to go from a corridor based license to a regional wide license for larger metropolitan or multi-city networks. 

Each size provides options for real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, API integration and historical data analysis, with licensing scalable according to the coverage area and data usage. This structure allows organizations to select the plan that matches their size, scope, and operational requirements.

Yes, PTV Flows offers a free trial edition that allows users to explore its real-time traffic monitoring, predictive analytics, and API capabilities. The trial provides full access to core features for a limited period, enabling municipalities, traffic engineers, and system integrators to evaluate system performance, coverage, and integration options before selecting a subscription plan.

PTV Flows provides support through the PTV Visum “Downloads, Learn & Support” hub, which links self-learning materials with the helpdesk and FAQs.

Other training opportunities:

PTV Flows Tutorials

Webinars PTV Talks

GitHub Tutorials

PTV Flows API Documentation

PTV organizes several user group meetings each year at different locations worldwide, offering direct interaction with PTV experts and other users.

PTV Flows delivers real-time, AI-based traffic forecasts (up to 60 minutes ahead) with predictive alerts, enabling operators to act before congestion forms, a direct lever for service quality and operational efficiency. 

It is self-learning with regular updates, and supports historical replay & KPI analysis for post-event evaluation and planning. For integration, PTV Flows provides a documented REST API (OpenAPI available) so system integrators, developers, and analysts can embed real-time, historical, and short-term forecast data into existing ATMS, dashboards, or analytics stacks. 

As cloud-based SaaS, PTV Flows requires no local installation, includes commercial map + Floating Car Data that are kept up to date, and reduces IT overhead, translating into faster time-to-value and lower total cost of ownership.