On a snow-covered evening, transport planners, policy makers and those generally interested in transport-related data, made their way to the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences’ Cassie Building, for a Transport Planning Society organised event; Applying GIS and Open Data in Transport. The promise of tea, coffee, and the odd mince pie drew those in from the cold…only to discover that caterers had fallen foul of the snow and icey conditions, leaving the audience with little other sustenance than having to digest the two presentations delivered during the evening.
Initially we heard from CESER researcher Alistair Ford on the work he and colleagues in the School have been doing, looking at climate change mitigation and adaptation within an urban context. This work was conducted as part of the Geospatial Engineering team’s involvement in the Tyndall Cities programme, and the ARCADIA projects. The delivered presentation can be found here and here (click both links to retrieve all slides, the first link is just slides 1-20, and the second 20-37).
The audience then heard from Graham Grant from the Tyne and Wear Integrated Transport Authority (TWITA). Graham discussed the possibility of some UTMC-compliant data streams being “opened” to developers, potentially allowing access to approximately 5 pre-approved data streams, with some real-time data included. There are approximately 20-25 datasets that could be made open to developers, and so Graham (contactable at Graham.Grant@newcastle.gov.uk) and colleagues will be looking for developers to prioritise that list, and help select data of most interest to them.
UPDATE: The list is now available: UTMC Data Sources – Provided by Graham Grant.
Thanks to Laura Hanson (CEG), and Nicola Hill (Senior Transport Planner, ARUP) for organising the event. Find out about more Transport Planning Society events here.