Work Zone Performance Measurement Using Probe Data
Appendix A: Future of Probe Data
Mobile Data Generation
Technology has become ubiquitous with the advent of personal devices such as smart phones and mobile tablets ("iPod" like devices). Equally important is the advent of the "app" stores where specialized software applications can be quickly added to these personal devices enabling almost any function imaginable. So it would not be difficult to create and deploy an application for these devices to generate the mobile data desired by the transportation community. In fact, there is precedent with the tracking cookies used by web sites to track visitors on the internet.
Connected Vehicle systems are also a potential future source of probe data. The concept for Connected Vehicles calls for each vehicle to be equipped with GPS tracking and a Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) system to provide wireless communication between vehicles and between a vehicle and roadside infrastructure. While the primary focus of early Connected Vehicle research has been on improving vehicle safety, there have also been several pilot projects that have demonstrated the potential for these systems to produce probe data.
Mobile Data Collection
Collecting mobile data from these devices, both personal and embedded, while technically feasible, may have more to do with economic incentives and associated business models. The communications protocols such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth communications are already present in these technology devices so localized data transfer would not be an issue. The mobile data "app" would provide the user the ability to authorize the data transfer to an entity in exchange for economic consideration. A real time mobile data model would require the use of existing commercial communications such as cellular or broadband. The individual would bear the upfront cost through their existing service plans. However, depending on who the data aggregator is, an economic incentive may also be viable to offset the consumer data transmission costs. There are examples of mobile data being collected today through standalone GPS device providers such as TomTom.
Specific Issues that Will Shape Future Mobile Data
Existing mobile devices, particularly the smartphone market, has connected over 82 million users in the United States to the internet. The overwhelming majority of these devices include one or more GPS services that support real-time location information between the device and the service provider. This penetration rate of nearly 25% provides the capability to have robust traffic information for most of the country. For example, mobile users of Google Maps with the GPS enabled currently feed anonymous data back to Google that provides a speed profile. Google combines that information with other users to produce the traffic layers on their maps.
Effectively, every GPS enabled device including handheld navigation systems, and vehicles themselves through services such as GM's On-Star and Ford's SYNC can all collect detailed speed and location data to support a variety of mobility applications.
Looking beyond standard GPS utilities, the Bluetooth travel time collection market has proven to be a very cost effective source of mobile data for DOTs in evaluating congestion and travel characteristics, often with relative small penetration rates, sometimes less than 5 percent.
Insurance companies like Progressive have implemented Pay As You Drive (PAYD) insurance plans with associated measuring devices to allow users to pay based on per mile activity.
There are two key constraints to accessing mobile data sets.
- Privacy – Despite the fact that people are no longer truly moving anonymously through the streets, in stores, and at home.
- Private Sector Market Data – Although users of mobile devices are often willing to opt-in and share their private data, the collectors often have a competitive reason for not sharing details that reveal information about the numbers of customers, location densities of the customer base, and on/off status type of data.
Just as importantly the true utility and applicability of the information can be cloudy with the ability to effectively characterize the answers to the following questions.
- Can the frequency of collected location, speed and other movement data be effectively defined per data source?
- Can any penetration rate or volume data be gathered from the sources?
- What is the native accuracy of the data collected?
- Is the collected data available in sufficient intervals to support desired applications?
- What is the cost move that data and who will bear that cost?
- What is the cost to aggregate and integrate the data into safety and mobility applications?
Independent of the technological considerations, the willingness of the users and the simplicity with which they share their information, be it on a smart phone, at a point-of-sale handoff at the gas station, intersection, or store via a debit/credit transaction, or download from the vehicle, will depend on the handoff being unobtrusive and with some value provided back to the users. That value could be in many forms ranging from cash back payments to discounted services and goods to free applications or services.
While the connected vehicle initiatives will bring a level of coordination and standardization to the data collection process for very specific transportation analysis data, the reality is the private sector market place will move forward without standards, particularly where the value in sharing the information may support more private business strategic analysis and marketing uses. For example, if a company can more effectively market goods and services, by better targeting consumers, then those companies may be willing to pay the bills that support the collection of location information. For example, with the prevalence of electronic billboards, particularly in urban environments, the near real-time understanding of the density of potential customers and even potentially demographic information may provide those advertisers with a better return in terms of where, when and how to utilize the billboards, and potentially how to modify and target other marketing methods.
Looking at an even more anonymous method of obtaining traffic information, the potential for high resolution satellite imagery and high resolution video analytics at least has the potential to serve as a massive CCTV network without requiring any user buy-in. For example, scaling up the powers of video analytics systems such as those provided by Citilog, Abacus, and other video technologies may be feasible. The ability to pay for that type of deployment is unclear.
Mobile Data Summary
In the final analysis, it would be difficult for any one company to have the core competencies for providing an end-to-end solution with sufficient market share to generate the volume and geographic footprint needed. While the technology has been present, four key success factors are:
- Reaching the mass market with minimal infrastructure, time to deploy and cost
- Applying the technology in a new or different way
- Creating new and beneficial business model(s)
- Strategic partnership(s) combining disparate core competencies.
