Travel Data Users Forum: Skills to Pay the Bills: Are We Adequately Preparing the Workforce for Future Data Streams?

While awareness of Big Data applications in transportation is widespread, experience and competency working with Big Data isn’t anywhere close to universal. Why is this the case? One key reason is that Big Data requires an expanded and unique set of technical capacities, and the industry is still catching up with this reality. For this iteration of the Travel Data Users Forum, the discussion will focus on actions being taken by educators, practitioners, and organizational leadership to successfully leverage the power of Big Data. Hear from experts and thought leaders that have proactively taken on the issue of addressing technical capacities needed for future data streams, and join the conversation to identify gaps and research needs.

For the 17th edition of the Annual Travel Data Users Forum, we are proclaiming that Big Data and its variants are officially no longer novel within the transportation data user community. Whether it’s location-based service (LBS) data from personal devices informing the NextGen National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), GPS data from probe vehicles processed into the National Performance Measures Research Data Set (NPMRDS), or any of the myriad other forms of data generated by an everchanging technological ecosystem, you’d be hard-pressed to find a transportation data user that hasn’t heard of Big Data and its many applications to the movement of people and goods. It’s also safe to contend that Big Data has taken a strong foothold in the transportation data landscape and isn’t going away anytime soon.

But while awareness is widespread, experience and competency working with Big Data isn’t anywhere close to universal throughout the transportation industry. Why is this the case? One key reason is that Big Data requires an expanded and unique set of technical capacities, and the industry is still catching up with this reality. Data analysts and consumers must become familiar with concepts of machine learning and application programming interfaces (APIs), data managers with handling data feeds as opposed to periodic snapshots, and everybody with legal and ethical issues around privacy and data ownership.

For this iteration of the Travel Data Users Forum, the discussion won’t focus so much on a particular type of data itself, but rather on actions being taken by educators, students, practitioners and organizational leadership to successfully leverage the power of Big Data. Hear from experts and thought leaders that have proactively taken on the issue of addressing technical capacities needed for future data streams, and share join the conversation to identify gaps and research needs.

https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/17205