~500k UK volunteers willingly contribute to advance medical science - What if the transport sector did something similar to better understand the demand side, was mode agnostic, borderless and across the seasons?
Globally admired, the UK Biobank is a biomedical database and research resource containing the most personal clinical records, including: genetic (DNA sequencing), blood tests, plus heart and brain scans from over 500,000 UK volunteers. This group of civic minded volunteers are advancing medical science with many involved in multi-year time series studies.
An utterly brilliant example, proving that if engaged correctly the (British) public can be inspired to share their data. So...
Big tech, poor data stewardship and the constant aggressive monetisation of user's goodwill has undermined the opportunity for data in multiple domains to solve real problems. 'Data' has become a dirty word.
Transportation is the movement of people and goods. A giant cog in any well-functioning economy with an outsize impact on the environment, wellbeing and society. Yet the sector struggles getting comprehensive end-to-end travel patterns, across the various modes, whether motorised or non-motorised. This data gap is even more acute in longitudinal studies, which can reveal impacts of seasonality, interventions, and disruptions influence travel behaviour over time.
VoxMoto (the Voice of Movement)
This consortium seeks funding to build the foundation blocks for a UK BioBank for transport. Working with stakeholders who are directly responsible for delivering public and private transit from service providers, infrastructure owners, planner and policymakers. To involve transport consultants, the Open Data Institute and through a series of workshops, and a survey of ~1,000 citizens investigate their views on data capture, sharing and how social/environmental/impact causes shift their views.
Business model and set up
Critically, finding a business model that DOES NOT monetise the user and the data (just as with the UK BioBank) and instead seeks OPEX from licensing the data capture tools (MyWays app or embedding of the SDK into stakeholder's own direct-to-consumer facing apps) and other data providers who can align to the principles.
With the initial CAPEX sought to build this eco-system coming from the public sector to deliver this public service.
Sharing/exchanging Multimodal times-series data
This project solicits the implicit engagement of both the general public and key transport industry stakeholders to help test out assumptions and identify:
The process will involve surveying a group of ~1,000 nationally and demographically representative members of the public over the course of a month. To present them with different data sharing scenarios, information and examples to evaluate pathways to success. The central goal of this project is to identify any barriers to help break down resistance to data sharing from both ends of the solution -- the general public and between the industry.
Problem owners/need
Our consortium partners cover all the major stakeholders responsible for a working transport system.
Data sharing/exchange platform
The MyWays app is then one service to be running for effortlessly collecting longer multimodal time series data due to the effortless data capture for this project. Recruit once - use many ways. Due to multimodal nature of data one might use for an active travel study, but can also capture public transit etc.
[A possible candidate for running side-by-side with any travel survey commission or demographic survey commission (e.g. local, NTS or Census). Assuring cost effectiveness by leveraging the same recruitment drive of carefully selected volunteers at the point of onboarding with a simple download link or QR code to save time and expense.]
Globally admired, the UK Biobank is a biomedical database and research resource containing the most personal clinical records, including: genetic (DNA sequencing), blood tests, plus heart and brain scans from over 500,000 UK volunteers. This group of civic minded volunteers are advancing medical science with many involved in multi-year time series studies.
An utterly brilliant example, proving that if engaged correctly the (British) public can be inspired to share their data. So...
- What if the transport industry built something similar?
- Why couldn't the same level of public altruism and civic contribution not extend to the transport sector?
- What can we learn from the likes of the UK BioBank and schemes to inform the foundations of a transport data common?
Big tech, poor data stewardship and the constant aggressive monetisation of user's goodwill has undermined the opportunity for data in multiple domains to solve real problems. 'Data' has become a dirty word.
Transportation is the movement of people and goods. A giant cog in any well-functioning economy with an outsize impact on the environment, wellbeing and society. Yet the sector struggles getting comprehensive end-to-end travel patterns, across the various modes, whether motorised or non-motorised. This data gap is even more acute in longitudinal studies, which can reveal impacts of seasonality, interventions, and disruptions influence travel behaviour over time.
VoxMoto (the Voice of Movement)
This consortium seeks funding to build the foundation blocks for a UK BioBank for transport. Working with stakeholders who are directly responsible for delivering public and private transit from service providers, infrastructure owners, planner and policymakers. To involve transport consultants, the Open Data Institute and through a series of workshops, and a survey of ~1,000 citizens investigate their views on data capture, sharing and how social/environmental/impact causes shift their views.
Business model and set up
Critically, finding a business model that DOES NOT monetise the user and the data (just as with the UK BioBank) and instead seeks OPEX from licensing the data capture tools (MyWays app or embedding of the SDK into stakeholder's own direct-to-consumer facing apps) and other data providers who can align to the principles.
With the initial CAPEX sought to build this eco-system coming from the public sector to deliver this public service.
Sharing/exchanging Multimodal times-series data
This project solicits the implicit engagement of both the general public and key transport industry stakeholders to help test out assumptions and identify:
- Incentives to help volunteers share data
- What knowledge industry stakeholders need
- Data standards that give assurances to all
- The commercial, ethical and reputational risks
- Possible legal frameworks to facilitate sharing
- How industry can exchange/share transport behaviour data proactively
- A business model and architecture for data sharing and access
- Security and privacy enhancement assurances
The process will involve surveying a group of ~1,000 nationally and demographically representative members of the public over the course of a month. To present them with different data sharing scenarios, information and examples to evaluate pathways to success. The central goal of this project is to identify any barriers to help break down resistance to data sharing from both ends of the solution -- the general public and between the industry.
Problem owners/need
Our consortium partners cover all the major stakeholders responsible for a working transport system.
- Infrastructure/public authority: Oxfordshire City Council (OCC), York City Council (YCC)
- Transport service provider: LNER (train)
- Transport data generator: TravelAi (microSME, innovation lead)
- Transport planning: MobilityLabs (microSME)
- General public: via already identified market research co.
- Transport consultants: SYSTRA
Data sharing/exchange platform
- To demonstrate and map out the possible commercial, economic, privacy , legal and technical considerations.
- With the Open Data Institute (ODI) providing their domain expertise to help survey the general public, evaluate privacy risks and legal frameworks.
- Furthermore testing the business viability through engaging end users.
- The project will also involve engaging with key industry stakeholders to data for sharing with anyone, within the industry and what could be commercially sensitive from the source multimodal data that TravelAi has already gathered.
- And is open to any company generating transport behaviour data who can align with the long term values of transport users and industry partners.
The MyWays app is then one service to be running for effortlessly collecting longer multimodal time series data due to the effortless data capture for this project. Recruit once - use many ways. Due to multimodal nature of data one might use for an active travel study, but can also capture public transit etc.
[A possible candidate for running side-by-side with any travel survey commission or demographic survey commission (e.g. local, NTS or Census). Assuring cost effectiveness by leveraging the same recruitment drive of carefully selected volunteers at the point of onboarding with a simple download link or QR code to save time and expense.]
