A systematic review in academic writing is a rigorous, methodical process of identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing all available research on a specific topic or question, following a clearly defined protocol to minimize bias and ensure transparency. Systematic reviews then provide a comprehensive, evidence-based summary of existing knowledge, identify research gaps, support informed decision-making, and add significant value to scholarly and practical work.

Great! But a systematic review is really hard work. And here it is!

Leonardo Monteiro-Fialho, Enrique Cueto-Rubio, Carlos Granell and Sergio Trilles, “Transportation Analytics Using Smart Card Data: A Systematic Review,” in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2025.3571101.

This recently published systematic review took almost two years to collect relevant documents, select and read them, evaluate them, and extract useful data elements for analysis. And these steps involved some iterations to satisfy useful comments from the reviewers during the peer-review process.

In short, this review explores how smart card data is being leveraged in public transportation research to analyse passenger behaviour, optimise operations, and support data-driven decision-making. As smart card systems become more widespread in buses, trains, and shared mobility services, they generate valuable trip-level data that researchers use for applications such as demand forecasting, performance monitoring, and travel pattern analysis. We mapped out the key analytical purposes, methods, and techniques found in the literature (N=176), identifying trends and highlighting underexplored areas. By synthesising over a decade of research, this review offers a comprehensive overview of how smart card data is transforming transportation analytics and provides a roadmap for future studies.

Additional research resources (data, code, docs, figures, etc) that accompany this study can be found on Zenodo:

Monteiro-Fialho, L., & Cueto, E. (2025). Smart card systematic mapping review code and datasets. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14615275

Monteiro-Fialho, L., & Cueto Rubio, E. (2025). Smart card systematic mapping review supplementary material. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15091768