Developing a Smart Electric Vehicle Strategy: From Data to Decisions

The city of Surrey aims to support the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) as part of their long-term zero-emission transportation strategy. However, understanding the extent and potential for EV adoption and designing effective interventions is dependent on understanding spatial patterns in demographics, housing, vehicles, infrastructure, and traffic. Although the city has collected data on these factors, the data are managed in separate systems and do not allow easy spatial visualization or analysis. In this work, we designed a tool to integrate and visualize six key datasets to understand EV adoption and developed an algorithm for the strategic placement of public EV chargers. In addition to presenting the technical contributions of the collaboration, we discuss successes and challenges in the integration of the project into the city's systems and its long-term impacts over five year.