How to create and share a case study

Many Waze for Cities partners are able to solve a variety of challenges and make better informed decisions through creative, Waze data-driven analysis and experimentation. Sharing these solutions can inspire and help other partners face similar challenges (see the Case Study Book for more details and examples).

Case studies illustrate the value of our free partnership to your commuters in your area showcasing your commitment to improving driving conditions in your community through the use of data.  

Check out some of these case studies.

To create an effective case study, consider:

Relevancy

Is your scenario tied to a recent event or an issue that affects most of your local community? Is it timely (weather-related, traffic event, etc.)?

The problem or challenge

What issue were you able to solve/improve? Some challenges may include:

• Reduce congestion in parts of town
• Reduce cars on the road or traffic during a traffic event
• Reach citizens during a crisis
• Reduce response times and traffic clearance costs
• Better support an infrastructure decision
• Better support local businesses

A clear solution

How did you solve it? What was the process? Did any Waze for Cities partners help you with ideas or execution? The solution should be written so that the average user can understand its impact.

Impact

• Did your solution clearly solve the problem you outlined? The strongest case studies include numbers and figures ranging from:
  • Percentages (% decrease in congestion)
  • Time (# of minutes saved on response times, how many minutes ahead Waze alerts are received)
  • Facts (# of cars off the road, # of police/EMS dispatched)
  • Savings (any amount to show how the technology or how response/alert times save taxpayers/locals money!)

Timeline

• Helpful to document the process - when did you identify the issue? When did you start analyzing data to inform decisions? When and how long did you test the solution?
  • For weather crisis support like hurricanes and snow, it’s also helpful to map by hour what was done as this support moves quickly - something that fascinates readers!

Visuals

Capture everything - screenshots of before/after map photos, graphs, photos onsite - anything that can help showcase the story.

Unique or scalable

Is this something that can be replicated by other municipalities or something they can learn from? Is this unique to your city and something that strongly impacts your citizens? 

If you have a good use case please fill out this form to tell us a bit more about it. Please note word count as it’ll help us quickly understand the details. 

If you have a case study that doesn’t fit the mold above, but you think is still interesting, please post to the forum. This includes case studies about fostering collaboration or helping each other develop tools/experiments together. Checkout the Rio and Miraflores case studies for examples.