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Practical Advice for Working with 3rd Party Data Providers
Traffic operations goals are largely the same no matter which state or city you are from. We all want to reduce congestion, increase safety, and mitigate the occurrence, severity, and impacts of incidents and events. These are lofty but attainable goals that require a tremendous amount of situational awareness if an agency has any hope of success. This means an agency needs to have complete and total knowledge about the weather, where incidents are occurring, where speeds and volumes are changing, what routes people are taking, and more. Getting real-time, reliable data for all of these things on EVERY road is too difficult, expensive, and otherwise unattainable with traditional intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies like cameras and sensors. Crowdsourced data (data obtained from the general public and commercial vehicles) is currently the only possible alternative that is cost-effective and capable of delivering the right type of information to agencies.
Crowdsourced data are any data that are obtained directly from those using the facility who are willingly, and often actively, engaged in using applications and/or connected equipment that contribute back data for the greater good. Crowdsourced transportation data can come from cell phones with navigation apps, connected vehicles, and more. Examples include things like:
Speed and Travel Time Data from:
* Google/WAZE
* HERE
* INRIX
* TomTom
Origin-Destination/Travel Behavior/Waypoints from:
* Airsage
* INRIX
* HERE
Incident Data from
* Google/WAZE
Some Connected-Vehicles Data, including:
* Heavy breaking events
* Fuel Consumption
* Headlight use
* Wiper use
* Traction Control engagement
* Rollover warnings
In the New York Times #1 bestselling business book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki demonstrates that, "Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Crowds are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, and even predicting the future." This notion offers important lessons for the transportation industry in our quest for ubiquitous knowledge about the state of our transportation systems. The benefits of crowdsourced data (and better data in general) are clear: faster notification of certain types of events; better situational awareness (especially in areas where you would otherwise not have detection or camera coverage-e.g., rural areas and arterials); and...