Introduction: Transport and ICT

Radical technological changes have occurred in the dawn of the twenty-first century, creating high expectations both for short-term and long-term evolutions in the use of information to improve trip accuracy and travel convenience within the transport sector. Information has become the global currency of this century and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) enables the distribution of information, facilitating both physical and digital accessibility. Coupled with increased mobility, the transport sector is constantly generating data through multiple devices, sensors and sources (Pelletier et al., 2011), an illustration of the unique feature of this era. Global mobile data traffic grew 81 per cent in 2013 and forecasts show that Africa and the Middle East are anticipated to grow – based on the compound annual growth rate – by 70 per cent whereas Central and Eastern Europe are anticipated to grow by 68 per cent (Cisco, 2014). So travellers and institutions have the ability to create value about themselves on their own, as members of organized communities or as part of the wider digital domain constantly producing or using data. It has been predicted that user-generated content and networking can act as democratizing forces in this context (Dutton, 2013)