On 9th of April 2025, MegaBITS Project Partner the City of Hamburg hosted an online workshop for the MegaBITS team focused on Floating Bike Data (FBD). The session brought together diverse perspectives and experiences from across the Flagship projects, highlighting the various methods, challenges, and opportunities in collecting and utilizing FBD.
Diverse Approaches in MegaBITS
Partners within MegaBITS explored a wide range of approaches to working with FBD—ranging from pre-existing apps and self-commissioned tools to GPS trackers and simulation models. This highlighted the importance of aligning your FBD solution with your specific use case to stay within time and budget constraints.
Representativeness Matters
A key question raised was: Who is actually generating the data? Understanding the demographic and behavioral representativeness of FBD is essential, especially for planning purposes. However, FBD also proves valuable in contexts where precise user counts aren’t needed—such as analyzing speeds, routes, stops, or intersection delays.
Incentivizing Cyclist Participation
High-quality data depends on active participation. It’s not just about having the right app; it’s about making cyclists want to use it. Creative strategies like gamification, challenges, promotions, and even theft protection can play a big role in improving data quality and coverage.
The workshop provided a comprehensive overview of the different approaches to collecting and using FBD within the MegaBITS projects. These discussions will help guide the development of more effective and reliable cycling data solutions as the project moves forward and beyond that to the broader deployment and uptake of FBD as a data source in the future.