Over 30 participants attended the first BigDataEurope workshop dedicated to the societal challenge of Smart Green, and Integrated Transport in Bordeaux on 7 October 2015.
The overarching aim of the workshop was to define the requirements necessary for big data management in the intelligent transport domain. The theme itself calls for a variety of topics and the workshop was glad to host speakers from various backgrounds be it policy, industry, research institutions or universities who presented on a wide range of topics ranging from the role of social media in transport, through open logistics and traffic management to data analyses techniques.
The workshop revealed that big data with regard to the transport hold considerable benefits for citizens with new and better services in transport, for society at large with for example a more environmental traffic low, for the public sector with an optimisation of traffic management, and for service providers for whom big data provides an important business opportunity. Big and open data also play an important role in how smart cities deploy and use ICT to enhance their transportation networks. Big data will for example lead to improved multi-source traffic and travel data availability and processing, and to tools to enhance multi-source traffic and travel data fusion for i.e. improved traffic and mobility management.
The ultimate goal of the BigDataEurope project is to design and build a platform that can benefit not only the transport domain but also a variety of other societal challenges. This first brainstorming on requirement elicitation was facilitated by the breakout sessions, where attendees could choose to join groups on Policy, Business, or Data & Technology. The Business breakout session discussed how current businesses will be challenged by big data. A political leap of faith will be required, together with an education/outreach process to the public at large to show that good things that can happen using use cases. Policy discussion for example included the tools needed such as better guidelines, how to anonymise and aggregate data; better guidance, understanding and control of big data. The Technology break-out session discussed for instance the cross-domain nature of transport data use-cases involving psychologists, road engineers, vehicle engineers etc.
The one hour breakout sessions were concluded with a short report from the leaders and finally conclusions and a closing note from the organisers.
We would like to thank all of you who attended the workshop in Bordeaux and invite you to continue the discussion on our W3C group!
