Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Chaos is expected to descend on Los Angeles on July 16, when a 10-mile stretch of I-405, a major highway running through the center of town that carries an average of 500,000 cars on a summer weekend, shuts down for more than two days.

Anxiety is palpable. Public officials have suggested that people simply stay in their houses. Last week the Los Angeles Police Department, concerned that people might not get its warnings through conventional channels, asked celebrities like Lady Gaga to send messages about the closure to their followers on Twitter.

But KABC, the local flagship station for ABC, sees the closure as an opportunity to experiment with technology tools as its plans to report on the mess as it unfolds. The station has partnered with Waze, an Israeli technology company that makes a navigation app for smartphones, to give drivers a real-time picture of what is happening on the roads.

Waze’s app tracks the movement of each of its users to get a sense of traffic, and then directs them to quicker routes based on the data it collects. The company says it has 180,000 users in the Los Angeles area.

During the highway closure, KABC will use Waze’s data to give its viewers updates on what is happening on a variety of alternate routes. The system will predict how long each route would take, a function that the app does in normal traffic conditions with relative reliability. KABC already uses real-time traffic maps, which draw data from sensors on freeways. But there is no equivalent way to get information about traffic on side streets, which are expected to see heavy traffic. Waze’s data includes information on anywhere where a critical mass of people are driving, and presumably many of its users will be winding slowly through side streets during the I-405 closing. So Waze’s system may be particularly well-suited for this specific task.

While Waze started crowdsourcing to aid personal navigation, the company’s eyes have increasingly turned toward citizen journalism. In Israel, where Waze has had the most success, it has a partnership with Channel2, a television station. When Waze users volunteer to be citizen journalists for the station, they are entered into a computer system that tracks their movements. Channel2 can then contact them if a news event is happening nearby. The station has used this system to contact drivers and ask them to submit photographs of events, and help its reporters find subjects for interviews.

In a sense the KABC partnership is more ambitious because it is relying not only on Waze’s ability to locate users, but its ability to analyze large amounts of location data to provide newsworthy information immediately.

Waze and KABC declined to discuss the financial aspect of their partnership. But Di-ann Eisnor, vice president of platform and partnerships for Waze, noted that broadcasters generally pay for good traffic information.

“There’s a potential model down the road that could be big,” she said.