1. The API Advantage Utilizing Cloud Data Sources for Transit Modeling
Presented By:
Catherine Theresa Lawson, PhD
Chair, Geography and Planning SUNY at Albany
Alex Muro
Lead Programmer
SUNY at Albany

2. Intro AVAIL (Albany Visualization And Informatics Lab)
Part of the Lewis Mumford Center
University at Albany, State University of New York.
Data science lab specializing in transportation, demographic and economic data.
Emphasis on web based solutions & spatial visualizations.
Today’s topic is Geo GTFS – a geospatial GTFS API (Application Programming Interface) created by AVAIL.
We are Open Source, Open Data & Open Government advocates.

3. Executive Order 13642
…to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, accessible, and usable.

4. Big Data
Noun
Data Sets that are challenging to process and analyze using traditional data manipulation techniques due to their size or complexity.
A popular buzzword that overstates the situational relevance of tremendously complex or large data sets.
Big data can be tamed with an API

5. Often Heard – “We want to be using big data” Rarely Asked – “Big data about what?”

6. What’s the big deal about big data?

7. What question are you trying to answer?

8. Open Data Free your data. Open Data can:
Encourage researchers and developers to use your data.
Improve data reliability through peer review.
Public participation means public empowerment.
Rapid, distributed development and advancement.
Open Data can be enhanced through the use of an API that allows developers to create software capable of interfacing with your data.

9. The Lifecycle of Open Data
Development
Deployment
Enhancement
GTFS From 200+ Agencies
Standardization
Open GTFS Data Repository
Publication
Innovation

10. Using Open Data
A data repository publishes many sources of standardized data.
Available API to download GTFS from their database. (thanks!)
Using their API a developer can;
Build an application to download compressed GTFS data files.
Decompress files.
Load files into local database.
Process data into geospatial format.
Output data using mapping software.

11. Building a Geo GTFS API Starting with an Open Data repository.
(i.e. Census API, GTFS Data Exchange)
We do the heavy lifting, once.
Download, decompress, and load GTFS into our database.
Process geospatial information.
Enables development of applications that can pick up where we leave off. Creating the opportunity for the extension of Open Data to new uses.

12. http://api.availabs.org/gtfs Geo GTFS API
Accessible, with documentation at:
Use our GTFS API to access Route and Stop geometry (GeoJSON, TopoJSON).
Extends GTFS with analytic data (Route Headway, Stop Wait Time, etc.).

13. GTFS Analyst Tool
We are going to cross our fingers now, and go to the live website.

14. GTFS Analyst Tool

15. GTFS Analyst Tool

16. GTFS Analyst Tool

17. GTFS Analyst Tool

18. http://availabs.org Geo GTFS API @ http://api.availabs.org/gtfs
GTFS Analysis