Has the game really changed?

My role at TRL Software is that of Chief Technologist. I would describe myself as a Citizen scientist, father, technologist, breaker, maker and fixer and just as my Twitter profile has to say all views are my own and did I mention that I am currently building the Smart Mobility Living Lab in London (more on that later).

From the first hands on with a computer many years ago, technology has always had a massive pull for me and it remains as strong today as it did then. The other constant has been the pace of change in technology, from that first MOS 8500 CPU of the family Commodore 64 and Hello World in BASIC, through to the TRL Software estate, home lab and now state of the art Smart Mobility Living Lab. I love my job, the current times are by far some of the most exciting in my career today.

So from the state of practice, art, and emergent technologies, I read, I read a lot. From technical press, journal publications, product promotional material with smatterings of social media, Linkedin and other go to daily reads. Transportation and the technology landscape has been going through what you can only describe as somewhat of a tectonic change the past few years, with everyone positioning their organisation, products and services to "disrupt the market" and being "game changers". As has been said before and will be said again, when everyone is disrupting the market, what is actually happening, what has been the innovation and what benefit has stemmed from that. Not a cynical view, but when everyone is doing it...

Rather than getting stuck into the "Something-as-a-Service" for a moment, data has been one of the biggest single areas of growth and is a trend that looks set to continue. From the oft cited 2-4TB data/day/vehicle in the CAV domain, real time passenger information, to the ever growing demand for more data, more access, more information.

A good scientific method needs an evidence-based approach, that evidence is data and can leads to actionable intelligence. In the context of transportation, you can see this playing out in the use of historical data to near realtime data being used in developing Traffic Management Plans, Incident Response Plans, Predictive Analytics, Nowcasts and Forecasts and this is all before you consider the work of the transport planners and modellers which add an whole new dimension.

All the datas.

Big Data, Data Breach, Data Analytics, Open Data, Data Lakes, Data Silos, Mr Data - there might a theme here.

1. Volume - how much
2. Variety - how many different types
3. Velocity - how often
4. Value - how can we make use of it 

In the UK, Europe and the West there is an increasing shift towards Open Data.

 The European Open Data Portal defines open data as:

 Open data is data that anyone can access, use and share.

Open data becomes usable when made available in a common, machine-readable format.

Open data must be licensed. Its licence must permit people to use the data in any way they want, including transforming, combining and sharing it with others, even commercially. 

Read more:

1. https://www.europeandataportal.eu/elearning/en/module1/#/id/co-01 
2. https://data.gov.uk/ 

Coupled with the growth of data has been the creation of further Data Silos. I find it interesting in thinking back to the days of mainframe computing giving way to the desktop pc to give power to the users and now the shift to cloud based / as-a-service platforms.

A big part of the changes, talk about future mobility, Mobility as a Service and so on is the emergence and development of the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle, even more data. Where is it, who has it, what can you do with it and what comes next.

Rather than telling you what we are doing is going to be a game changer and that we are going to disrupt the market, we are just going to get on with it instead. I say, don't change the game, change the rules. Focus on what your customers - both internal and external need and focus on meeting them.