Auckland Transport Northern Express double-decker bus Image: Auckland Council
Auckland Transport has a "truckload" of data on citizens in its possession, but according to its CTO Roger Jones, the data is useless unless it's put to use.
"We've always had lots of data ... we've got truckloads of it, petabytes of it, but what we don't have is information," Jones told the Fujitsu World Tour 2018 in Sydney on Tuesday. "So turning that data into something useful is what we're trying to do."
One initiative the council-controlled entity is embarking on to make the city experience better for citizens through the use of its data is the "gamification" of public transport.
Partnering with US gaming company Machine Zone, Auckland Transport is looking for ways to make travel in the city as exciting as game play.
"They know all about multilingual, they know how to process fast, they know about large amounts of data -- it's a great combination for us -- and they know how to gamify some of this stuff," Jones explained.
"That's the next step, how do you gamify your trip? Make it more pleasant and have fun on the bus."
While the project is still in its infancy, Jones said the organisation is keen to explore how to connect its citizens with one another, allowing the real-time monitoring, for example, of where friends are.
"Gamifying will help us with this -- but it's also about new data sources. If you're going to get to AI and start making automated decisions, you need more information and it's information we don't necessarily hold," he continued.
Jones said Auckland is going to soon trial a use case across its ferry system that