ITS Research Program, UW

Self-Defining Data:
ITS Network and Data Fusion

Sponsor:

Federal Highway Administration

Description:

Beginning August 1993, the University of Washington, in cooperation with WSDOT, Seattle Metro Transit, and the TransNow university research center, began to establish a regional communication infrastructure to facilitate data exchange and interagency communication for state-wide ITS research, development, and delivery of services. The purpose of this project is to progress from specific regional issues and generalize these efforts by creating key network and fusion components that are transferable to other regions and countries. Specifically, this project will:

1. Investigate, design, and document an encoding scheme for standardization of traffic and traveler information. This encoding scheme is the first step in a comprehensive "data fusioin algorithm" for ITS since it will facilitate national communication between ITS applications through the Internet.

2. Use this encoding scheme to demonstrate a layer between the application and transport layers to be developed for specific Washington State agencies.

3. Work with another ITS research center to apply the encoding scheme in a demonstration of its use in inter-regional ITS communication.

An instantiation of the encoding scheme developed by this project can be located under the ITS Backbone Architecture component of the Smart Trek model deployment initiative project.

References:

Dailey, D.J., D. Meyers, and L. Pond. A Self-Describing Data Transfer Methodology for ITS Applications. Final WSDOT Report. March 1999.

Dailey, D.J., D. Meyers, and N. Friedland. "A Self-Describing Data Transfer Methodology for ITS Applications". Presented at the Transportation Research Board 78th Annual Meeting, 10-14 January 1999, Washington, DC.