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SAFER’s research infrastructure will be expanded with a new asset for efficient traffic safety research; a data catalogue with quality assured information

Dec, 02 2021

SAFER expands its research infrastructure with another value-adding asset, SAFER data portfolio, introducing a data catalogue containing information about available quality assured datasets for research and description on how these can be accessed.

Erik Svanberg, project leader for the initiative, says:

“SAFER has an impressive project portfolio of world class research. With an ever increasing focus on data in the community, we are now establishing a SAFER data portfolio to support projects and partners. Knowledge of the different datasets available in SAFER's network is important for efficient work within projects, providing new perspectives on past and present research, and being able to create completely new projects through data-driven research. By sharing knowledge on these datasets in a SAFER data catalogue, we will help ensure that SAFER continues to be attractive to other research groups in the world”.

The benefits for the partners to get access to the data catalogue through the SAFER partnership agreement are several. The partners will be able to leverage on investments in existing and highly interesting datasets they may not themselves have resources to analyze. Also, they are able to get an even better understanding of historical traffic data, in specific VRU behavior in relation to vehicles, and to collaborate on using the right tool, on the right computational infrastructure. 

High-quality data is key in future research
SAFER is currently well positioned through the naturalistic driving databases, and our partners would benefit from access to unique data already existing in our network, which could ignite new collaborations and lead to new insights. The SAFER Naturalistic Driving Data platform is a secure, world-class platform for handling data from naturalistic driving data collection. Providing state-of-the-art data management, several large datasets and a leading research competence regarding naturalistic driving data, this platform gives unique access to naturalistic data derived from more than 8 million driving kilometres. However, the SAFER partners have many more datasets that could be of great interest to other partners that might not be known. By sharing high level metadata about these assets, including information on the conditions for access, new possibilities for collaboration opens up. 

 “In a pre-study project, which was carried out earlier this year, we concluded that SAFER partners have access to unique data, either internally or within collaboration, and that they can leverage existing data by collaboration in a secure and trusted way. If the SAFER partners share high level metadata on existing datasets, we can get even more opportunities to create new projects and collaborations by a data driven research approach”, Erik tells.

The content in the data catalogue
As a first step in further strengthen the SAFER Data Portfolio asset at SAFER, a value adding data catalogue for the partners, will be developed. The data catalogue will be regularly reviewed and updated within SAFER’s reference groups. 

The catalogue will include a high-level description of the datasets, contact information, scope, conditions for access and usage, and potential collaboration possibilities.  We foresee that the datasets in the catalogue will origin from e.g. test tracks data collection, human body modelling, crash tests, insurance matters, naturalistic driving data collection and synthetic data. The ambition is for a first version of the data catalog to be ready by January 2022.

“Having a mindset of sharing knowledge and metadata information on datasets and collaborating on using these datasets for research purposes in a secure and trusted environment, the SAFER partners can take another step in conducting world class research within the vehicle and traffic safety domain”, Erik concludes.