Data Management & Analytics

Data management is an administrative process that includes acquiring, validating, storing, protecting, and processing required data to ensure the accessibility, reliability, and timeliness of the data for its users.
Proper data handling and management is crucial to the success and reproducibility of a statistical analysis. Selection of the appropriate tools and efficient use of these tools can save the researcher numerous hours, and allow other researchers to leverage the products of their work. In addition, as the size of databases in transportation continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly important to invest resources into the management of these data. There are a number of ancillary steps that need to be performed both before and after statistical analysis of data. For example, a database composed of different data streams needs to be matched and integrated into a single database for analysis. In addition, in some cases data must be transformed into the preferred electronic format for a variety of statistical packages. Sometimes, data obtained from “the field” must be cleaned and debugged for input and measurement errors, and reformatted.