FUSION: How SYSTRA’s groundbreaking study will transform the future of travel data in the UK  

The Department for Transport’s (DfT) FUSION project, led by SYSTRA with research partners TravelAi and Yonder Data Solutions (YDS), set out to tackle one of the biggest challenges in UK transport planning: the lack of accurate, high-resolution, longitudinal data on how different people actually travel.

In an era shaped by the rise of micromobility, fragmented multimodal travel and hybrid working patterns, the limitations of traditional data collection methods have become increasingly apparent and are now starting to show their age. More may be possible using new data sources, such as from mobile phones, and tools, such as AI.

FUSION set out to understand whether a new, scalable method can be developed to integrate high-volume smartphone-sensor derived ‘big data’ collected through the MyWays app with traditional contextual survey ‘deep data’ such as socio-demographic information and qualitative insights. Together these data sources will provide a much richer picture of travel behaviour, fusing the where, when and how with the why. This then provides demographic information which allows specific policy and evaluation needs to be targeted. Using privacy-preserving methods and advanced analytics, the project demonstrated how these emerging datasets can enhance, validate, and modernise the evidence base used in UK transport planning.

The FUSION project demonstrates how the UK can evolve from the occasional, survey-dependent insights into capturing timely, dynamic real-world travel behaviour insights that are capable of supplying policymakers with an ongoing, reliable evidence base. It offers a blueprint for a new era of data-driven transport policy, one where real-world movement patterns can be monitored continuously, analysed responsibly, and used to build a more efficient, safer, more inclusive transport system for the UK and perhaps beyond.

Contact our team here to find out more about the FUSION project and the services our specialists can provide.

To download the full report, click here.