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Australian Transport Research Cloud (ATRC)
Data and tools to accelerate transport research and impacts across Australia
The Challenge
Currently, transport data in Australia is notoriously difficult to find, access and use. Using these datasets within tools requires significant wrangling and training to set up and obtain meaningful results.
This can become particularly challenging when investigating problems at scale, such as large metropolitan cities or towns, which may require substantial cloud-based storage and/or compute resources.
The Response
The Australian Transport Research Cloud (ATRC) aimed to provide transport researchers, planners, policy and decision makers – from academia, government and industry – with a technical platform that offers data and tools to accelerate transport research and impacts across Australia.
The ATRC’s capabilities will support the needs of researchers focusing on passenger transport, specifically road and rail modes.
It aimed to provide streamlined access to the key datasets and open source analysis and modelling tools necessary to address complex transport issues facing our cities, and delivers the requisite knowledge base to inform smarter transport management, planning and policy making.
It also aimed to create opportunities for collaboration and the development of new tools, allowing resources to come together in a flexible and effective way that will ensure the platform’s sustainability into the future.
The Outcomes
The ATRC provides a new capability for Australian transport researchers to collaborate and apply an array of analysis and transport modelling tools to an unprecedented curated collection of FAIR high-value datasets, informing planning of and investment in transport infrastructure and services.
The project developed a range of tools relating to transportation data, analysis and simulation.
The tools are available via a GitHub repository.
Visit the ATRC GitHub repository.
Available tools include:
- rCITI PopulationSynthesiser
Synthetic populations are crucial inputs for agent-based microsimulation models. This tool offers functions for creating synthetic populations using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. To generate a synthetic population, a reference sample and population margins are required.
- ITLS OSMParser
Simulation tools like MATSim require transport network information – such as information about roads or public transport networks – to be provided in particular ways and formats, formats which are different from the ways this information is most available. OSMParser can convert OpenStreetMap data into network information that can be used by MATSim.
- ITLS MATSimWrapper
MATSim is a complex open source tool that allows for running large-scale agent-based transport simulations. This tool wraps and containerises MATSim, allowing to run in cloud-like environments, and also provides simplified ways to set default configurations required by MATSim.
For more information, visit the ATRC GitHub repository.
Who Will Benefit
The ATRC platform supports Australian transport researchers through high-value transport data, cutting-edge analytics and modelling tools and workflow creation capabilities. The evidence-based research will help all levels of government enhance their planning of, and investment in, transport infrastructure and services.
This platform will also benefit the wider community by contributing to government goals to:
- make public transport more effective and efficient
- reduce road congestion, commute times and vehicle emissions
- improve national productivity and international competitiveness
- reduce air pollution, noise pollution and heat islands
- improve population health and wellbeing.
The Partners
The ATRC is a collaboration between Australian transport researchers, planners and policy makers (from government, industry and the private sector), AURIN and the ARDC. Our partners were:
- AURIN
- ARDC
- University of Melbourne
- University of NSW
- University of Sydney
- Monash University
- The University of Queensland
- University of Western Australia
- HERE Technologies.
Who will benefit
Researchers, planners, policymakers
DOI
https://doi.org/10.47486/PL104
Timeframe
March 2020 to March 2023
Current Phase
Complete
ARDC Co-investment
$1,482,000
Project lead
Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN)
Program
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