The data economy will create hundreds of millions of euros in value for transport in Finland. In recent years, Fintraffic's role, which covers all modes of transport, has brought transport operators to the same table to jointly build a data-based traffic data ecosystem. During the spring and summer, Fintraffic and consultancy firm FLOU examined the impact of this ecosystem. What kinds of results on impact came up in the study? How will impact be measured in the future?
The traffic data ecosystem coordinated by Fintraffic aims to provide competitive and scalable transport and mobility services for both Finnish and international markets – solutions that will enable safe, low-emission and user-oriented travel and logistics chains that combine different modes of transport.
“Last year, the value of the traffic data economy was as much as EUR 400 million, and Fintraffic's share of the Finnish traffic data economy was approximately EUR 40 million. Impact and its verification are key factors in the construction of the traffic data ecosystem and the promotion of the traffic data economy, as there is only a limited amount of information available on traffic data ecosystems globally,” says Serkan Tetik, Development Director at Fintraffic.
A study conducted by Fintraffic and FLOU aimed to find answers to how the digitalisation rate of the traffic data ecosystem can be promoted and measured. The research limited the ecosystem to areas of data, infrastructure and cooperation, such as technical infrastructure and information model standards.
Impact of Fintraffic data is created, for example, through time data
The data ecosystem generates direct impacts on the business operations of companies operating in the transport sector, but also indirect impacts at the societal level. For example, new types of services have emerged on top of traffic data, which have given growth to companies and increased people's well-being. As part of ecosystem work, Fintraffic offers extensive open data for the use of transport operators.
“With regard to Fintraffic data, impact is created through means such as time data in saved time and euros and in reduced emissions. That there was not information available for the study on all use cases or amounts of data shared through the Digitraffic and Digitransit platforms proved to be a challenge in the assessment of impact,” Tetik explains the research results.
Fintraffic has been an active promoter of the traffic data ecosystem by sharing raw and processed data and by producing various information services for the transport sector. According to the study, Fintraffic achieved a business impact of EUR 10-40 million and a societal impact of EUR 4-26 million from the Finnish traffic data economy in 2022.
In the future, impact can be measured in numerous ways
The data ecosystem creates value for both transport sector actors and passengers, but impact is created in the long term. In the future, the impact of the traffic data ecosystem can be measured at Fintraffic, for example, on the basis of the number of the Digitraffic platform’s external data sources. The number of service users and the market share of the total market, the volume of data use and the monitoring of use cases, user feedback and the monitoring and measurement of data projects also offer an opportunity to measure the impact of data.
“In the future, we will also be able to conduct annual business surveys or interviews on data and its use. For example, information on the number, size, productivity, products and services of companies using data, the effects of data, and the size of investments based on traffic data all provide indicators for measuring impact,” Tetik sums up.
