The aim of the clients is the protection of Sella Pass, an area in the Dolomites of environmental interest with a great natural beauty, by regulating vehicle access (cars and motorbikes) thanks to the implementation of a centralized reservation system.
The project includes multiple distribution channels of digital passes, aimed at final users, operators present at the access gates and at the accommodation activities, such as hotels. It is therefore necessary a real-time infrastructure transversal to all the frontends that is robust and that guarantees 24/7 service provision.
The scenario to be managed is very complex, due to the many access variables: time, day, access side (Sella Pass is in between the province of Trento and the province of Bolzano), type of vehicle and distribution channel. The absence of previous metrics made necessary to design a system that can be tuned in real time during the project itself, editing the availability tables thanks to a web dashboard.
As domain experts, we also played a role of consultancy and active presence to bring the system to full capacity, including meetings on the territory with the actors involved. The short amount of time after the tender awarding required a great deal of effort to implement and test the solution in time for the beginning of the project.
Since we care about users, we adopt the so-called User Centered Design: it has been our duty to create a solution able to satisfy different types of final users:
- private drivers that just need a quick solution for direct booking from own devices
- operators who need speed and reliability of the mobile instrument in use at the gates
- hotels that need speed and ease of use to satisfy their customers
The solution developed is a centralized reservation system in real time, cross-platform, equipped with availability tables able to handle even very complex constraints and logics.
The frontends used are the standard products of OpenMove Suite, appropriately enriched to intercept users’ needs:
- app and webapp OpenMove WAY for users. Every user has the possibility to book his pass in just a few clicks, choosing the day, the time slot and the type of vehicle with which he wishes to transit;
- app OpenMove ACT and portable Bluetooth printer for operators at the access gate. The operators can inspect the passes of users as well as print a new pass in a few seconds for users who do not have it;
- web version of OpenMove ACT for accommodation facilities. The accommodation facilities have the ability to issue passes for their guests through a dedicated web dashboard.
- administration platform (OpenMove ATLAS) for the Public Administration. It allows to manage in real time the availability tables, to coordinate the operators at the gates, assigning roles and customized permissions. The platform also makes it possible to visualize emission and inspection data in real time, constantly monitoring the reservation and entrance process.
The service is provided on cloud by OpenMove with a series of VPS located in multiple locations and orchestrated by the production environment, to which is added a clustered database for data storage. This production architecture allows high availability, fault tolerance, load balancing and disaster recovery of services in order to guarantee to the customer a high-level Service Level Agreement.
The centralized system implemented for the project has satisfied all the different usage scenarios of the different types of users, thanks to the use of multiple products that belong to OpenMove Suite.
The advantages of having a single system implemented by a single supplier are the absence of integration costs and the absence of management overhead for the customer.
Data collected during the project has a great value and are useful for:
- accurately measure the traffic conditions of the territory
- evolve the system on-the-go and calibrate it on the actual use
- justify, with real data, the possible future extension of the project in other areas
The Public Administration has measured a significant cost saving compared to the alternative of distributing pre-printed passes, which is more onerous in terms of operations and inspection. The system is also natively ready for new scenarios such as paid access to restricted areas.