Employing 6,000 people, Dublin City Council (DCC) delivers housing, water and transport services to 1.2 million citizens across the Irish capital. To keep the city moving, the council’s traffic control center (TCC) works together with local transport operators to manage an extensive network of roads, tramways and bus lanes. Using operational data from the TCC, the council’s roads and traffic department is responsible for predicting Dublin’s future transport requirements, and developing effective strategies to meet them. Like local governments in many large European cities, DCC has a wide array of technology at its disposal. Sensors such as inductive-loop traffic detectors, rain gauges and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras collect data from across Dublin,
and each of the city’s 1,000 buses transmits a GPS update every 20 seconds.

Questions for Discussion
1. Is there a strong case to make for large cities to use Big Data Analytics and related information technologies? Identify and discuss examples of what can be done with analytics beyond what is portrayed in this application case.
2. How can a big data analytics help ease the traffic problem in large cities?
3. What were the challenges Dublin City was facing; what were the proposed solution, initial results, and future plans?