The Transportation Secure Data Center (TSDC), managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is celebrating 15 years of enabling smarter transportation research while protecting participant privacy.
Since its launch in 2010, the TSDC has become a trusted source for secure, high-quality travel data. The platform allows government agencies, transit providers, and cities to share travel survey data safely. At the same time, researchers, planners, and organizations use the data to explore how people move and how energy is used in transportation.
Trusted by Thousands, Powered by Data
Over 5,000 users from universities, automakers, labs, nonprofits, and public agencies have registered to use the TSDC. What began with household travel surveys has expanded to include detailed transit data and GPS-based travel records. Today, the platform contains over 19 million miles of GPS data and more than 26 million miles of diary-based travel logs.
These datasets have supported over 260 research projects, contributing to work on everything from congestion reduction to energy use and emissions modeling.
From GPS to Innovation
The idea for the TSDC emerged during a shift in the mid-2000s, when GPS travel surveys started replacing traditional self-reported travel logs. GPS allowed researchers to track movement patterns with high precision, second by second. NREL recognized the potential and built a platform to collect and protect that data while enabling access for research.
This work has also shaped other NREL tools, like Fleet DNA, FleetREDI, and DOE’s Livewire Data Platform. All of them follow the same data security principles introduced with the TSDC.
Additionally, NREL’s open-source platform OpenPATH™, which collects partially automated travel diaries, contributes data to the TSDC. GPS datasets from the TSDC also support NREL modeling tools used to study driving behavior and vehicle efficiency in real-world conditions. “Often, organizations conducting these surveys are reluctant to share the data because of privacy concerns or simply due to limited staffing,” said NREL’s Joe Fish, a transportation research engineer. “The TSDC solves these challenges in a creative way and has a strong track record of success.”
A Growing Impact
With every dataset added, the TSDC helps paint a clearer picture of how people move through cities and regions. That insight drives better decisions on transportation systems, infrastructure, and energy use.
Fifteen years in, the TSDC continues to grow—adding new types of data, supporting cutting-edge research, and helping to design a cleaner, more efficient future for transportation. “Advanced NREL modeling tools such as FASTSim™, EVI–Pro, and RouteE were all developed and trained using the millions of data points available in the TSDC, allowing the lab to boast some of the most advanced, accurate, and adaptable tools in the field,” said NREL’s Jeff Gonder, a senior transportation research analyst and the founding project lead for the TSDC. “These tools are as robust as they are because of the TSDC.”
