The mayor-elect of São Paolo, Brazil, South America’s most populous city, has enlisted the Israeli navigation app Waze to assist in managing traffic for the area’s 20 million residents, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Wednesday.

Joao Doria, a media mogul who was elected earlier this month and will assume office on January 1, met with Waze CEO Noam Bardin on Sunday to discuss ways to develop technology and use innovative techniques to manage mobility in the metropolitan area.

Also at the meeting was Daniel Annenberg, who was selected by Doria to head the effort to computerize public services. “We are planning partnerships in various sectors, both in the mobility and security areas, including an integrated security center to provide data to manage the city better,” Annenberg explained.

Doria has long been interested in Israel. In 2011, he led a delegation of Brazilian CEOs to Israel as part of an initiative from the Brazil-Israel Chamber of Commerce. The next year, the Brazilian Society of Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem awarded him the Scopus Prize for his efforts to build ties between the two countries.

“This coexistence gave me a great learning experience and made me even more enthusiastic about the values of Judaism and Israel, a small country where large investments in education and innovation are key pillars.” Doria recounted. “In Israel, I discovered the value of peace, the precise understanding that Israel is not a country that was formed to go to war, but a nation of young men and women who desire peace.”

In 2013, Google purchased Waze $1.3 billion, then a record for a smartphone app. The Google purchase was made possible after a deal with Facebook fell through because Waze refused to relocate its engineering team to California.

[Photo: Mark Hillary / Flickr ]