For years we have been talking about Big Data and its importance. In this article I want to focus on a type of potentially strategic Big Data that is still too often underestimated.
The first to understand the importance of Big Data were those companies like Google, Microsoft, Tom Tom. They had the foresight to invest in this sector and, in our field, in geodata before their value was widely understood. Public administration, by contrast, has been left at the starting line. For example, in the New Highway Code, article 13, paragraph 7 states:
“Road-owning authorities are required to carry out traffic surveys to acquire data with annual validity and to fulfill the obligations undertaken by Italy at the international level.”
Do you know whether that monitoring is actually being carried out today?
I understand the problems generated by the cut in funds that the P.A. has had to face over the years but public administration collects data every day, often without even realizing that it could become a driver of growth for this country.
I put myself in the shoes of the professional who was appointed by the municipal administration to draw up the traffic plan (art.36 of the Highway Code). His first problem is gathering the data needed to support the whole plan. If no traffic-flow data are available for that area, he could build an initial picture by collecting data on the distribution of users of municipal schools at every level. Schools are certainly among the “generators” of traffic flows in a territory and their users are recorded, at least annually, also considering the address. By analysing those routes it becomes possible to identify the streets most affected by this type of flow to verify the feasibility of a pedibus, a bicibus or the establishment of a municipal shuttle. The same reasoning could be applied to public offices in order to assess the feasibility of carpooling. For commercial activities, the municipal trade office could use its own data and carry out an analysis similar to the one used for schools.
In this way we would build a geographical database that can be integrated, when the municipal administration decides to invest in flow monitoring, in the road flow monitoring database. This information, once the sensitive data has been removed, could be made public, making it possible to create new levels of service in that territory. Not to mention that this information would contribute to the creation of a mobility system on a municipal scale which would also include data from public transport companies. Over time, consolidating this database would make it possible to collect mobility information that is far more accurate than the data processed, for example, by Google Traffic, without passing the cost of buying traffic-flow data on to taxpayers and while making use of data that are already collected every day with public money.