OFFICE OF OPERATIONS 21st CENTURY OPERATIONS USING 21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES
Click on any of the following frequently asked questions to learn more about crowdsourcing.
Also, consider hosting a virtual or in-person introductory crowdsourcing course to help your local, regional, or State transportation agency consider whether and what crowdsourced data and applications may best meet your agency’s needs. For additional questions, please reach out to a crowdsourcing colead listed on the Contact Us page.
Crowdsourcing is the practice of enlisting the services of a large number of diverse people to solve a problem or address a need that would otherwise be outside an organization’s resources or means to tackle. Crowdsourcing leverages the collective wisdom and unique insights of a crowd by distributing the workload across a large group, incentivizing or gamifying participation, and using technology and new forms of communication to reduce the workload for crowd members and accelerate data sharing. Crowdsourcing is ubiquitous; it is used by public and private organizations around the world.
Crowdsourced data are commonly available for transportation operations whenever and wherever people travel. These data can be categorized as coming from the following six categories:
Crowdsourced data types vary by source. Data can include speed and travel time by road segment, traffic event alerts, or traffic tiles (i.e., a map image of a region with roads color-coded to reflect speed ranges). Data can also include incident reports such as crashes, stalled vehicles, potholes, or weather hazards. Some data, such as from social media, may include photographs, text narratives, or even videos. Some sources may include vehicle trajectory for motor vehicles, bicycles, and other multimodal modes.
Using crowdsourced data allows transportation agencies to increase their monitoring capabilities, or situational awareness, of real-time traffic conditions. The crowdsourced data provide a new real-time data source, outside of the boundaries of fixed sensors and cameras, to actively manage traffic and provide traveler information. Simply speaking, crowdsourced data help agencies do the following:
In summary, crowdsourcing enables agency staff to make decisions with low latency, increased accuracy, and cover larger geographic areas, leading to improved traffic flow through the system. Beyond TSMO, crowdsourcing can support planning, maintenance, asset management, public involvement, and a host of other efforts under a transportation agency’s purview.
A wide range of TSMO strategies and applications can be implemented or enhanced with crowdsourcing. These include enhancement in real-time operations, planning for operations, and investment decisionmaking. Below are a few examples of benefits crowdsourcing provides as compared with conventional data collection methods:
Agencies considering using crowdsourced data should first understand how these data are generated and what factors may affect their accuracy, precision, and timeliness. For example, third-party data providers make available estimates of traffic volume data; however, these estimates may be based on correlations between historic trends and other data. Consequently, when demand is inconsistent with historic trends, the quality of the traffic volume data may dramatically drop.
Crowdsourced data accuracies are a function of the user base from which data are sourced. Consequently, the accuracy of the information will vary by the number of travelers using a specific mobile application or vehicle type (e.g., connected car data) and will vary by number of travelers using a specific roadway (by time of day, day of week, or season).
For greater data usability, third-party data providers and agencies typically employ strategies to filter data noise and poor reports, leaving data that are actionable by traffic operators. Roadway agencies can compare multiple sources of data to cross-check the accuracy of crowdsourced data. Studies assessed various forms of crowdsourced data to verify accuracy.
Sourcing of crowdsource data is a function of (1) the specific needs of the agency, (2) the resources available to the agency, and (3) the availability and quality of third-party data. Some State agencies can share certain types of crowdsourced data and tools with local agencies. At times, divisions within an agency may already purchase or collect certain crowdsourced data; thus, exploring within the agency is a good practice.
To help identify the right crowdsourced data adoption strategy for your agency needs, please email any of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Everyday Counts Round Six (EDC-6) Crowdsourcing for Advancing Operations Innovation colead listed under Contact Us.
Crowdsourced data costs are a function of multiple factors, but the most important is the source of the data. When collected using in-house apps, agencies must consider development, marketing, and maintenance costs for the system. The costs associated with purchasing third-party data vary based on the lane miles of the road network for which data are wanted, the frequency of data reports, and the data access and sharing agreements with the vendor.
Regardless of the cost of the data, there is always an investment cost for processing, integrating, managing, and using the crowdsourced data. These costs are also present when using “free” social media platforms or through the Waze for Cities partnership program.
To help develop the cost basis for your agency’s needs and for an introduction to a peer expert, please email any of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Everyday Counts Round Six (EDC-6) Crowdsourcing for Advancing Operations Innovation colead listed under Contact Us.
The added value of putting third-party data on a public agency website is the ability for the agency to first assess the data, establish its credibility and trustworthiness using other internal or external datasets, and then provide the public with reliable and trusted information. Third-party providers are not necessarily driven by data reliability or trustworthiness for use by transportation agencies. Public agencies must establish themselves as trusted data providers in the world of crowdsourced data if they want to remain credible to the public. In addition, having a consolidated, single source of information for travelers is a value for day-to-day operations and is critical during adverse conditions such as flooding or evacuations.
Crowdsourcing is inherently linked to connectivity. Crowdsourcing apps can cache the feedback and input from users and later reconnect and submit this feedback for analysis, but any real-time advantage is lost. The only way to increase presence and reporting in areas with limited or no cellular coverage is by using a technology called “peer-to-peer” or mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). This technology works by hopping communication from one cellphone to the nearest one until an Internet access point is reached. Used in disaster recovery to establish communications when cell service has been damaged, this peer-to-peer technology requires a somewhat dense and distributed presence of cell phones for it to work. That said, cellular coverage is always improving, especially near public highways, so even a single report could provide valuable information and leadtime to an agency that may otherwise be unaware of an incident or road weather event until later.
The following are potential funding opportunities that could be used to support crowdsourced data use efforts:
