Chapter 1: Keeping Up with a Changing World: Challenges in the Design of Transport Survey Methods

At the 2008 International Conference on Transport Survey Methods in Annecy, France, transport survey methodologists and practitioners shared their experience with keeping abreast of the data needs of a rapidly changing world. Over the past decade, this has translated into the need for: an expanded travel survey toolkit; methodological innovation for surveys of freight and public transport operations; a growing use of data collection and processing technologies; a need to align surveys with other data streams; and an increased interest in the comparability of international datasets on personal travel and commodity movements in an era of globalisation. We discuss how these guided the choice and scope of the five themes around which both the Annecy Conference and this book were organised.