GPS mapping in Lisbon

This caught my eye recently, as I've been looking into how design can help us understand otherwise abstract or complex concepts or data.
Put simply, GPS was used to track 1534 cars travelling around Lisbon, Portugal, during October '09, and the GPS coordinates and velocity of the vehicles gathered over the month is condensed into one single virtual day, grouping the data by second and displaying it as an animation. you can see one of the stills, and a link to one of the animations.
With positive applications for traffic control, policing, town planning etc., this kind of mapping is obviously helpful, but I think there are far greater and more varied applications for this kind of link up of technology and design, and I intend to find them.

Traffic in Lisbon – emphasis on sluggish areas from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.