The Race to Win the Data Revolution
In their quest to become the world leader in the data revolution, several countries are beginning to open up government data. This not only helps to harness innovation in order to deal with challenges such as an ageing population and the adoption of artificial intelligence, but also to shape the future of mobility.
The race is on: China, the USA, Canada, Russia and the UK all have recently announced that they intend to become world leader in AI — to come out on top in terms of the current data revolution. The one thing they all have in common in their ambition to be #1? Opening up government data. The most recent one to do so was the UK, which has already opened up more than 44,000 datasets as part of their “Industrial Strategy” introduced in November 2017. That not only helped Britain to top Oxford Insights’ Government AI Readiness Index, but is also built the foundation for a reported additional £232bn on GDP by 2030.
That may, standing alone, seem like an exceedingly bold assertion. Nevertheless: Even though we cannot affirm or disprove the exact figures, we do see enormous potential for the economy as a whole in the use of open government data too. To us at Parkbob, unstructured legacy data which has, up until now, been tucked away in data silos simply to be archived and forgotten, is playing a huge role in creating new solutions to existing problems and generating new value for individual users just as well as for countries and humanity itself.
When it comes to generating new and beneficial services based on data one core takeaway of many in-depth sessions with companies and governments alike is this: While there are of course many possibilities to install and use new tools and systems to generate even more data, we usually already have access to lot on information, that “just” needs to be put to good use.
Same is true for our effort to digitize the last mile in mobility. Yes, of course we leverage new technologies and generate fresh, proprietary data such as behavioral data and crowdsourced inputs from our users just as well as satellite and street level imagery. But we also make us of unstructured government data from 60 cities (and rising) which is just waiting to be put to good use.
Through that combination of a total of 1.200 data sources we are able to transform lots and lots of data into actionable information to enable better mobility decisions. Be it for personal urban navigation, car sharing services or other use-cases like improving fleet efficiency, pick-up/drop-off optimization or usage and fee reporting. Through Parkbob, we are bringing the most comprehensive, context aware and fully digital parking rules & restrictions product to the market which would have not been possible without using unstructured legacy data.
If you want to get some more information about any of these services and the way we work, check out our website or get in touch with us directly!
Christian Adelsberger is the founder and CEO of Parkbob. Parkbob organizes the world’s curb-side data and transforms it into actionable information to enable better mobility decisions.
