Workshop 5 report: Harnessing big data

A group of researchers, consultants, software developers, and transit agencies convened in Santiago, Chile over 3 days as part of the Thredbo workshop titled “Harnessing Big Data”, to present their recent research and discuss the state of practice, state of the art, and future directions of big data in public transportation. This report documents their discussion. The key conclusion of the workshop is that, although much progress has been made in utilizing big data to improve transportation planning and operations, much remains to be done, both in terms of developing further analysis tools and use cases of big data, and of disseminating best practices so that they are adopted across the industry.