Training day

Starting off as a postgraduate student, the theory goes that your previous studies (usually your undergraduate degree) will have equipped you with the skills you need to be a “researcher”. The theory often fails because the types of things that you will do as part of a PhD/EngD are usually very specialised, whereas undergraduate teaching tends to be somewhat more generalised. A surprising amount of your time is therefore spent “learning”, be that through (directed) reading of printed matter (journal papers etc) or hands on training with equipment etc.

Having waited 18 months for it to arrive, this week I get to start playing with the new common database. Equipment arriving late is a very common issue with PhD’s and is probably one of the biggest reasons for a project not being completed on time (if indeed at all). Fortunately, because of the multi-facetted nature of the EngD course, I’ve been able to re-allocate this time to other projects without too much hassle.

So today, I start a three-day training course on the use and operation of our shiny new common database. For the uninitiated, a common database is what you might call a ‘very expensive computer’ that takes connections from a myriad of different equipment related to transport, air quality monitors etc. The technology involved is based on a government sponsored project known as UTMC (Urban Traffic and Management Control).

For Surrey County Council, the basic idea is to use this plethora of different data sources (mostly existing, some new) and combine them together to produce something that is “greater than the sum of its parts”. Particularly of interest here is getting a better (and real time) idea of where congestion hotspots happen to be. This might be indicated by a higher than expected number of vehicles on one part of the network (indicated by automatic traffic counters), how closely to timetable the local busses are running (indicated by our GPS tracking) and how busy the major traffic junctions are (as indicated by the number of vehicles waiting to use each approach).

Of course, in order to do this, I need quite an in-depth idea of how to programme the thing, which is where this course comes in….