In my work and studies in urban planning, I have worked with urban and transport data, including traffic information, spatial data, population data and land-use data. I obtained data from public datasets, GIS sources and organisational databases.

The four characteristics of big data were present to different degrees: volume because of the large amount of spatial and traffic data, velocity because some traffic data was updated frequently, variety because the data came in different formats such as maps, tables and statistical datasets, and veracity because the quality and reliability of the data needed to be checked before analysis.

This experience showed me that data quality and proper data management are as important as the amount of data available.