A great leap forward
Open data is also closely connected to the further development of city governance. The Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs worked with local governments to jointly promote seven projects in 2018, continuing to pave the way towards smart cities.
For example, open data is helping with traffic management. Cities often require police to direct traffic at peak hours. But engineers can use historical traffic data that includes the volume and types of vehicles, and travel times, to build regional transportation models, then plug in real-time traffic flow data to predict traffic conditions ten to 60 minutes in the future. This allows traffic managers to improve their signal control strategies, thereby reducing traffic congestion and manpower expenses.
Taichung’s Daya Interchange connects several major transportation corridors. A very important intersection for city residents, it frequently becomes congested during the evening rush hour, weekends, and holidays.
By building a regional traffic model incorporating CCTV, electronic toll collection (ETC), GPS, and changeable message sign (CMS) data; installing inductive-loop traffic detectors at intersections and freeway ramps to collect real-time traffic flow data; and then integrating the real-time data into the long-term model, engineers can produce accurate traffic forecasts. Armed with these forecasts, traffic-control systems can automatically adjust the length of traffic signals, reducing travel times by 10% without the need for human management.
The application of this data benefits both the general public and the government.
A member of the at-large advisory committee on open data, Tim Chen says that the government used to have a very limited view of how to apply its data. One of the advisory panel’s recommendations was that the Tourism Bureau create a simple questionnaire to gather information on the questions travelers ask at airports’ tourism information counters. The data gathered from this survey over the course of just one year yielded surprising results.
For example, the survey found that 37% of the 5,000 people per day who visited at the information counters at Taoyuan International Airport wanted to know where to find a bathroom. Given that the counters have to deal with an average of one inquiry every three minutes, this suggests that placing clearly visible signs in the airport’s arrivals areas could greatly reduce the workload of information-counter staff.
Carrie Chang, secretary-general of the Organization for Data-driven Applications, is surveying the data needs of private corporations and working with the government to facilitate public–private cooperation.