Beyond the Data Smog?

In 1997, the American journalist David Shenk warned us that when it comes to data and information, we will soon be confronted by the unpleasant side effects of overload, complexity and abundance. A decade later, in a special report on managing information, The Economist estimated the total amount of data in existence at that time to be equal to 1.2 ZB (Zettabyte) or 2 bytes (The Economist, February 27, 2010). For our understanding, all the catalogued books in America’s Library of Congress total 15 TB (Terrabyte) — 1 ZB equals 100 000 000 000 TB. Clearly data are everywhere and are being produced and reproduced as we speak. Data are flooding in at rates never seen before — doubling every 18 months — as a result of greater access to data from public, proprietary and purchased sources, as well as new information gathered from Web communities and newly deployed smart devices (Bughin, Chui, & Manyika, 2010). This fundamental change of going from a data-scarce to a data-rich environment seems to infer a shift from relatively “small data” studies aimed to answer specific questions based on sampled data to “big data” studies that aim at probing for relationships and correlations between a wide series of variables and contexts. The term big data is used as a general term for referring to data sets so large and complex that traditional data processing applications are no longer adequate. But Kitchin and Lauriault (2014) rightfully point to the fact that prior to 2008, data were rarely categorized in terms of being “small” or “big”. Nowadays, this distinction is a fact, by making an explicit reference to such data characteristics like limited to very large volumes, slow to fast velocity and limited to wide variety (Dumbill, 2012). The question is whether these monstrous amounts of data will also contribute to a better understanding of today’s world. Is big data leading to better, big insights? Will more data, in our case, travel, infrastructure and traffic-related data lead to a more superior understanding and explanation of travel relations, mobility patterns and transport behaviour? It is true that current information and communication technologies are given us exciting new opportunities when it comes to data collection. Key is the increasing significance of networks and sense of connectedness. New technologies allow us to establish links within and between various types of networks: physical networks, like roads and urban districts, energy infrastructure and waterways; social networks, both face-to-face and virtual; and numerous data and sensor networks. It provides us with new methods of collecting novel information about transport infrastructure from Transport Reviews, 2015 Vol. 35, No. 3, 245–249, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2015.1036505