Page 38 - Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities

18 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Questions to Be Addressed 19

system. These are paraphrased from a keynote speech at the Intelligent Trans-
portation Society of America’s annual meeting in Houston in 2010 in which
the then chairman of IBM, Sam Palmisano, brought IBM’s vast experience in
developing systems to bear on transportation [1].
In that speech, Palmisano indicated that IBM considers the following four
questions when determining if a system is really a system:

• Does it have clarity of purpose?
• Are the major elements connected?
• Can we determine the status at any given time?
• Can it adapt to changes in the environment?

Clarity of purpose refers to a predefined and agreed on set of objectives
for the system. Transportation does pretty well in this respect, although we
tend to have purposes and objectives for individual elements such as toll roads,
transit systems, and freeways, rather than a single set of objectives for an en-
tire transportation network within a city. This leads to the second question
regarding connectivity. There has been a tendency to stovepipe transportation,
attaining the benefits of specialization and close control. Such stovepiping is
ineffective when it comes to applying advanced technologies, as many of those
technologies are designed for sharing. For example, if your work requires you to
travel across the country, it is not necessary to buy a plane to get there. Anyone
can purchase a plane ticket that enables the sharing of a single plane by many
people. Many advanced technologies are just like this; it makes much more
sense to use various mechanisms to identify people who can share the cost and
effort involved in achieving a given objective.
The question about status directly addresses the use of sensors and, ul-
timately, probe vehicle data for transportation, which makes extensive use of
sensors and telecommunications networks to link transportation elements to-
gether. It can be expected that the volume of data from these sources will grow
extremely rapidly over the next few years.
The final question on adaptability is one of the big reasons why we need
to continue to apply advanced technologies to transportation. It is also why
progress toward a complete and detailed understanding of current operating
conditions and future demand for transportation is important. Many transpor-
tation projects involve the use of asphalt, concrete, and steel. Scheduled dura-
tions for these projects can be multiyear, with the decisions made now, setting
the scene for 30–50 years into the future. There is not a great deal of flexibility
in infrastructure. Fortunately, however, the dynamic nature of transportation
demand and our ability to manage capacity for better results stands in contrast
to this inflexibility concerning our infrastructure.