The Mobility Data Market

Big Data is an emerging paradigm that is currently attracting a lot of interest around the world, especially in the transportation and mobility sector. The combination of disruptive technologies and new concepts such as Smart Cities is expanding the lifecycle of mobility data. In this context, Big Data is seen as a new promise for the industry to effectively manage all the data the industry needs to provide safe, clean and efficient transportation and enable users to personalize their transportation experience and mobility.

According to a study by MobiDataLab, the EU-funded lab for prototyping new mobility data sharing solutions, many companies that position themselves as aggregators or analytics providers are using open data sources like OpenStreetMap.

In addition, competition is fierce among companies that take an integrated approach to multiple components of the value chain. These companies own or have access to data relevant to mobility and offer standardized or customized data and analytics services. Some rely on a proprietary and exclusive data source (e.g., Geotab), others mix their proprietary data with other data, and still others obtain a variety of mobility data and combine it into a single service (MapBox, Carto...). Vehicle location data, map data and static infrastructure data are the most commonly available data.

Another MobiDataLab report clarifies the main gaps and problems in the current transportation data market. These gaps include, for example, the heterogeneity of data sources, which makes data aggregation and comparability difficult; the varying degrees of availability and accessibility of mobility data; the lack of standardization models and data anonymization tools; and the poor understanding of the business value that sharing data would foster.

Also according to MobiDataLab, mobility data sharing is a very dynamic market. The data being generated is increasing dramatically, the use cases are becoming clearer. Selling mobility data and the services needed to share and use it is a large and growing market.