Everyone’s favourite GPS application (Ok maybe not) has today announced that it’s Waze for Cities Data will be made available on the Google Cloud Platform for ready analysis. OK, that sentence might not make sense to anyone. What the heck is Waze for Cities, right?

Well, Waze for Cities, formerly known as Connected Citizens Program, launched in October 2014 with 10 city partners and has grown to more than 1,000 partners globally. This free, collaborative program leverages mobile technology and crowdsourced traffic data to empower municipalities and first responders to improve their existing city infrastructure.

What this essentially means is that Waze has a program that allows its partners to analyze traffic data to have a better idea of how to ease congestion.

Making the data available on the Google Cloud Platform is big news, namely because Waze for Cities Data partners will no longer need to build their own tools or have different systems for different data sources. The integration with Google Cloud will make it easy to view Waze for Cities Data and layer in other transportation-related data sources to see the full picture of mobility trends in one place.

Partners can analyze up to 1TB of data and store up to 10 GB of data for free each month. With this program, partners can also securely and privately store and analyze their own data and perform their own analytics buttressed by Waze’s Cities Data. As with all Google Cloud partners and customers, Waze for Cities partners will remain in complete control of their data.

This is some pretty neat stuff from Waze. This announcement pretty much shows that the company is walking the walk when it comes to its commitment to bring together communities both on and off the road.

Any public agency is eligible to apply for the program by clicking “Apply Now” on the Waze for Cities homepage. Current Waze for Cities partners will receive more information on how to integrate their existing account.