BITS at the POLIS Annual Conference 2020
BITS was present in the session ‘Unlocking the data potential’ at the online POLIS Conference 2020 on the 1st of December. The POLIS Annual Conference provides an opportunity for cities and regions to showcase their transport achievement to large audience of mobility experts, practitioners and decision makers.
This session included various best practices in terms of new data applications in cycling, public transport and in mobility in general. The session was moderated by Victoire Champenois from the European Commission. This event demonstrated the importance of ITS and data in generating insights to help policy-makers in improving cycling conditions.
Robin Kleine from the province of Overijssel presented our approach, projects and results so far. He discussed among others our approach to ITS and data, based on the idea that ITS generates data and that these data can actually be used to feed information services for cyclists and to generate insights that help manager and policy makers in improving cycling conditions.
Together with Bikecitizens, Robin went in discussion with the attendees about, amongst others, the concept of ‘data reflex’. The term 'data reflex' was introduced by Steven Soetens (Province of Antwerp) during the BITS Cycling Academy 2020 and translates a four step approach to be aware of data and know how to use it in order to provide valuable insights (read more about data reflex here).
The conclusion was that there is a big need for cycling data and that ITS offers opportunities in generating some of the data. However, to truly capitalize on these possibilities, we need to be aware of the possibilities: What is in the data and what is not? How can we unlock the potential?
Access to the Robin Kleine's presentation can be found here.