Cluster calls

This Special Issue published by the Journal of Transport Geography and edited by Emmanouil Tranos and Elizabeth Mack aims to critically assess and demonstrate how new sources of big data and the related methodological developments have influenced transport geography research. Specifically, the special issue demonstrates the value of such data sources by presenting a collection of cutting edge geographical empirical studies, which take advantage of the ‘three Vs’ that characterize these data (variety, volume, and velocity). In these pieces, a variety of data sources are utilized, which range from train timetables and flows to bike sharing data, to Tweets and to data about individual mobility trajectories from wearable global positioning system (GPS) devices. Transport geography has always been a cross-disciplinary community, but it seems that the availability of new sources of big data has drastically enhanced this characteristic of the field. The special issue can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2018.08.003

This special issue is the output of an international workshop, which was co-organized by the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and NECTAR Cluster 8 in March 2016 in Seville, Spain. The success of the event, in terms of the large number of participants (around 40 presentations), and also the cross-disciplinary nature of the participants, which included engineers, transportation geographers, urban planners, physicists and cultures geographers initiated this special issue.