Whether it is shared cars, bikes, scooters, or their relationship with transit, shared mobility transportation services are creating huge amounts of data, both about the trips that individuals are taking and the services themselves. These data sets are critical for planning and operating transportation services and understanding how these services are affecting our communities. They can show how people get around, who and where these services benefit, and where services may improve access or add to congestion and impede movement.
While the opportunities are clear, accessing and using these data sets is not as easy as it seems. The volume of data is immense, not everyone has the tools and expertise needed to turn it into useful information, and there are valid concerns that the data becoming available could reveal too much information about individual travelers, and about the transportation providers.
How can we balance the desire to create and use immense amounts of data and the need to protect individual privacy and intellectual property? This seminar helped attendees tackle that important question.
Local and national experts on opportunities and challenges with shared mobility data, including legal experts, transportation service providers, and data scientists, shared information on topics like:
What data are we talking about and why is it important?
What are the concerns with individual privacy and how can they be addressed?
Why don’t private companies want to share data?
What are the technical challenges to creating, managing, and using all this data?
How do local, state, national, and internal policies on data affect these issues?
Event Summary
Photos: Danielle Elkins, City of Minneapolis and Heidi Corcoran, University of Minnesota
Sponsor
This event was sponsored by the Twin Cities Shared Mobility Collaborative and supported by the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota.