Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is opening up its significant stores of transit data with the release of two major datasets in order to improve understanding of transport patterns and optimize infrastructure investments.

Why it matters: The move is likely to win the company goodwill from city officials after attracting heightened scrutiny from authorities, especially over the past year. Machine-learning applications, largely driven by data sharing, play a critical role in resource utilization and planning safer, smarter transport networks.

Didi in late 2017 first launched its GAIA Initiative, a global research platform under which scientists can apply for access to anonymized data to explore traffic solutions.
Detail: Didi will make available two of its anonymized historical TTI (Travel Time Index) datasets which index urban congestion, gathered from vehicles on its platform, Didi CTO Zhang Bo announced Friday at the China National Computer Congress summit in Suzhou.
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