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46 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities What Is Big Data? 47

Figure 3.7 The dramatic reduction in hard drive storage cost from 1990 to 2009 [10].

someone else’s data center or in the so-called cloud. The cloud is a network of
servers with some servers processing data and some servers storing data.

Transfer

When a big data set gets into the high terabytes or low petabytes, data transfer
becomes an issue. The following Table 3.2 shows data transfer times for a pet-
abyte and a petabyte of data at the various transmission speeds that might be
available to a transportation agency.
As Table 3.2 shows, even at the fastest speed of 10,000 Mbps (10 Gbps)
it takes almost 14 minutes to transmit a petabyte of data. This suggests that co-
location of various data ingestion and processing hubs should be given serious
consideration in the development of a big data and analytics capability.

3.7 Big Data in Transportation

To conclude this chapter, we bring big data to life from a transportation per-
spective by exploring some potential sources of big data within the world of
transportation. Note that the definition of big data as discussed earlier is uti-
lized in this chapter and that it’s not necessarily all about volume, but also
variety and velocity. The intent is not to create a catalog of all possible sources
of big data in transportation, but to provide an overview of the possibilities. Big
Data in transportation can be viewed from the perspective of the different ap-
plication areas for advanced technologies in transportation. These are listed in
Table 3.3, then discussed one by one.