The TRACK&TRADE project “Building a data mart for floating car data” is a co-operative research project funded by the European Commission under contract number COOP-CT-2006-032823.
The TRACK&TRADE project aims at exploiting the untapped resource of Floating Car Data (FCD) as a cost-efficient means for the accurate assessment of traffic conditions.
The scope of the project is to development and creation of a Web-based data mart for the collection of Floating Car Data (FCD) and the provision of value-added services.
A myriad of traffic-related services such as traffic management, traffic planning, the provision of services related to traffic such as navigational services, fleet management solutions and telematics services, or simply traffic news depend on the accurate assessment of traffic conditions. So far, this is achieved by establishing a costly, stationary sensor network covering the roads and area in question.
We advocate a Web-based approach for the collection and exploitation of the large pool of existing Floating Car Data (FCD) sources. FCD are data generated by tracking vehicles to sample the overall traffic conditions (”cork swimming in the river”). Having large amounts of vehicles collecting such data for a given spatial area such as a city (e.g., taxis, public transport, utility vehicles, private vehicles) will create an accurate picture of the traffic condition in time and space. Although large volumes of such data do exist they have not been utilized and exploited yet.
