IF articles

Summary - The vast diffusion of mobile location and communication devices continuously produce a huge amount of data (‘Big Data’) that can be exploited to im- prove the knowledge about the state of the transport sys- tem and perform appropriate regulatory actions and exe- cute suitable policy actions. However, current informa- tion systems still have noteworthy drawbacks and are in the meantime open to significant improvements. The pa- per discusses the main problems related to the use of the Big Data and examines the opportunities offered by Big Data to introduce new transport models based on contin- uous updating of microscopic models. The first part of the paper, of conversational nature, is complemented by a concise overview of the research conducted by the authors with multiple objectives: derive a quantitative characteri- zation of the mobility phenomena, understand users’ be- haviour and preferences, develop enhanced prediction models, and study new mobility services.