Facing the growing list of challenges of transport in urban environments has been keeping city planners uneasy for quite some time now. Authorities need to face issues of congestion, commuting and environmental effects all in the dawn of a Europe where 75% of the population live in urban environments.
The emergence of big data technologies may provide a much awaited solution to comprehending and controlling traffic flow and aiding traffic management centres in creating a more livable city life.
The historical Greek port city of Thessaloniki, a forerunner of ITS for many years, will be the pilot test site of the BigDataEurope project’s societal challenge of smart transport with focus on streaming sensor network and geospatial data integration.
The city has been building and expanding state-of the art equipment for the past years making it the perfect location to showcase how the existing infrastructure can be further improved by utilising the big data platform to enhance its capabilities.
Thessaloniki is currently collecting data via a static sensor network, dynamic sensors, cooperative technologies and social media. Great quantities and rich varieties of data (or in other words: big data) are aiding the city to deliver more accurate and more responsive forecasting to its citizens.
Read the full article published in Thinking Highways to find out more about the potential of big data in traffic management and what is happening in Thessaloniki.
This post originally appeared on: www.big-data-europe.eu
