<p>January 11, 2018 12:30 PM Eastern Standard Time <br>BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Didi Chuxing, the world’s leading mobile transportation platform, announced that it will make aggregated, anonymized data from its vehicle network available to facilitate transportation AI research worldwide. <br>DiDi announced the global expansion of the GAIA Initiative at the 97th Annual Meeting of The Transportation Research Board (TRB 2018) in Washington, D.C. The GAIA Initiative was first launched in China in October 2017, under which scientists may apply for access to the anonymized data to explore solutions to traffic challenges. Initially, GAIA will provide a dataset containing anonymized start points, end points and routing information of trips on DiDi Express and DiDi Premier, two of DiDi's core personal mobility services. <br>For experts in the field of AI and transportation infrastructure, large amounts of high-quality data are critical for research and development of new products and systems. By leveraging DiDi’s big data and the expertise of researchers worldwide, DiDi hopes to raise public awareness of sustainable transportation planning and stimulate the creation of new areas of research and innovation. Any data made available will be anonymized and aggregated, as well as encrypted at rest and in transit. <br>Prior to the GAIA Initiative, DiDi launched a data visualization platform for city transportation managers to facilitate research of transportation needs and the development of new traffic management strategies. GAIA extended DiDi’s outreach to the academic community within China, and now worldwide, to catalyze broader, deeper research in an expanding range of topics in the field of transportation. </p><p><b></b><i></i><u></u><strike></strike><br></p>