Tour de France: big data enters the race to evaluate real-time runners

For the first time, three digital technologies combine to improve tracking of the race: the Internet of Things, big data and cloud computing. This technical part is entrusted to Dimension Data, a company of digital services (ESN), a subsidiary of the Japanese group NTT.

The 198 riders are equipped with a GPS transponder, slipped under the seat at the rear of the bike. Over 15,000 data representing about 100 megabytes, are captured by rider in one day. Resulting in a total of about 19 gigabytes for the entire race. A large volume although it remains below the levels of big data estimated from 10 terabytes.

Injected into the cloud of the ESN,  the data are first cleaned and analyzed before being made available to the organizers, commentators, broadcasters and media. All in less than a second. Thus it is possible to track each player in real time and know its speed, its exact position in the race and the distance from the other riders.

 The processing platform is mainly based on an open source MongoDB database and swallowed software, analysis and correlation of data from IBM InfoSphere Streams.

 Read more (in french) : http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/tour-de-france-le-big-data-entre-dans-la-course-pour-evaluer-les-coureurs-en-temps-reel.N339838