The BITS project publishes bicycle data from European cities
The partners of the interdisciplinary BITS project - Bicycles and Intelligent Transport Systems - recently met up digitally to discuss about the next working steps. As part of the 7th Steering Group Meeting, the European regions and Baron Mobility from Oldenburg presented their current running or planned activities on smart cycling applications. Among these, the province of Antwerp will repeat the detection of critical situations (near accidents or interventions) at a dangerous intersection based on an intelligent 3D camera system in autumn in order to assess whether cycling safety has improved on site. In September 2019, first experiences with this measurement technology were gained at an intersection in Puurs in the provincial area. The related results of the data analysis of the VLBA student project group Bicycle Data can be found at www.bicycle-data.de.
The CyclingDataHub (CDH), a European portal for open bicycle data and the key deliverable of the BITS project, was officially launched in April. Already 135 data sets were shared by internal and external stakeholders and are open available to the general public. In this context, suitable formats and metadata were also discussed intensively as part of the internal meeting. The VLBA department of the University of Oldenburg is currently working on the further development of the Bicycle Data website, which will provide a lot of European bicycle data sets to the CDH, and on the improvement of the included Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on bicycle use and cycling safety in European cities.
Another discussion topic was the question of whether and how the internal project meetings could be conducted at least partially in presence again in the future. The next project meeting could be conducted in Oldenburg in October 2021 as a hybrid event, which means that participation both in presence and via video online call could be possible, if the further course of the pandemic permits that.