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After many years of data scarcity in transportation-related sciences, we have now entered the era of big data. Large amounts of data are available from GPS devices, mobile phone traces, payment transactions, social media, and other sources. The opportunities that this new availability presents are enormous. High-quality data is available at very low or negligible cost. These data can be used to develop new tools, to explore and understand travel behavior and to formulate new policies. However, the challenges are also big: the access to the data is not guaranteed, confidentiality has to be considered, the capacity of processing and enriching these databases has to be developed, and only then will they become really useful for decision-making and for the definition of public policies. This chapter presents an overview of the current state of play, and discusses the future perspectives, focusing on the challenges of building new predictive models.

In the previous Chapters (4_7) we discussed the numerous uses and appli¬cations of the Internet for people, companies, and systems, all within urban contexts. All of these uses and applications have come already into operation so far. In this last chapter of Part II of the book we are about to explore a rather upcoming application of IoT, probably being the most extensive, daring and crucial one, namely communications by and to vehicles, thus turning them into driverless AVs.

We will begin this chapter with the summaries of the previous chapters, pre¬sented in sequence. We will then move to an interpretation of the Internet as a general-purpose technology, and finally, we will conclude the book with an evaluation of the general theme of the book as presenting Internet applications, followed by Internet implications, within an urban framework.

In the previous chapter, we outlined numerous services that urbanites have traditionally obtained in urban physical space, and which they now growingly pursue through the Internet. Individuals, who use their Internet connectivity, whether fixed and/or mobile, for the performance of service activities, find themselves simultaneously present in physical space bodily and within Internet space virtually. Hence, this chapter is devoted to an exposure and interpreta¬tion of the emerging hybrid dual-space society, consisting of the double pres¬ences of individuals in urban physical and Internet virtual spaces. The chapter will focus on the very conception of hybrid dual-space and its emergence, followed by an exposure of the ways in which urbanites experience it, as well as function within it.

This chapter presents the development, structure, and distribution of the Internet for people, as well as of the IoT for non-living entities. The chapter will highlight, first, the history of the Internet and its structure. In this dis¬cussion, special attention will be devoted to the comprehensive nature of the Internet, in its double role as a communications medium and an information service, as well as to its becoming mobile, as of the late 1990s.