Finding new meaning in transport data

Joe Preece is a TransiT researcher based at the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) at the University of Birmingham. We asked him about his work.

What’s your specialism?

I’m a computer scientist with a background in data science and ontologies. Ontologies are basically a way of describing meaning and relationships in data. When you do that well, you can link together different datasets much more automatically and reliably. In a project like TransiT – where lots of sectors, systems, and streams of transport data need to talk to each other – that’s hugely valuable.

Why does TransiT need this science?

Transport data is complex. There’s a lot of it, it comes from many different modes, and it rarely fits neatly together out of the box.

For TransiT to build and connect multiple digital twins representing the UK’s transport system, we need a more streamlined way of knitting those data sources together. Ontologies can help do exactly that by adding structure and meaning so that disparate systems can interoperate.

What’s your background?

I’m originally from Reading in the Southeast of England. I moved to Birmingham for my Bachelor’s degree in physics and ended up staying: first for a Master’s in computer science, then for a PhD looking at blockchain applications for the rail industry.

After that, I joined the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) as a Research Fellow. BCRRE is Europe’s largest academic group focused on rail research, so it’s a great place to work at the intersection of transport and technology.

One of the tools we work with is the Birmingham Railway Virtual Environment (BRaVE), a sophisticated railway simulator built by fellow TransiT researcher Dave Kirkwood. BRaVE plays an important role in TransiT’s Challenge‑Led Demonstrator 2, where we’re creating a combined rail and bus passenger transport digital twin for the West Midlands. As part of that, we’re studying how people travel to work in Birmingham and looking at what changes could accelerate decarbonisation.

Although I’m currently based in Birmingham, I’m excited to be joining the TransiT team at the University of Glasgow soon, where I’ll be continuing the ontology research we have started!

What do you hope to achieve at TransiT?

TransiT’s overarching goal is to show how digital twins can support transport decarbonisation across the UK.

My own contribution focuses on smoothing out the process of building ontologies, which is currently a very meticulous and time‑consuming job that requires specialist expertise. If we can automate parts of that workflow, we could make it much easier to integrate datasets and unlock new kinds of analysis.

Imagine being able to run queries across data sources that previously lived in their own silos, or that you might never have thought to combine. That opens the door to discovering new patterns and logic within the data, which can benefit not just transport, but many other sectors too.