Traffic and Travel Information digital TPEG standards to be reviewed

Date: 6/5/2009

Source: ISO [1], ISO [2]

The two series of ISO standards for digital TPEG broadcasts are to be reviewed. The standards enable the digital transmission of Traffic and Traveller Information (TTI) via various types of delivery channel, e.g. Digital Radio (DAB), Internet, Digital TV (DVB), GPRS and Wi-Fi etc. The key benefits of TPEG are:

o        Both human content and machine-readable content

o        Language independent

o        A common location referencing system to enable any client device to take advantage of the content with no prior installation of a location database

o        Multi-modal travel information

o        Works regardless of location or client type in use.

TPEG, which stands for Transport Protocol Experts Group (similar to JPEG and MPEG), is defined in two series of standards that were both published in 2006:

o        ISO/TS 18234:2006, Parts 1 to 6 – binary coding

o        ISO/TS 24530:2006, Parts 1 to 4 – Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Both of the series of published standards contain sub-parts, which consider the use of TPEG for various applications. These are as follows:

o        ISO/TS 18234:2006, Parts 1 to 6, Traffic and Travel Information (TTI) -- TTI via Transport Protocol Expert Group (TPEG) data-streams

Part 1: Introduction, numbering and versions

Part 2: Syntax, Semantics and Framing Structure (SSF)

Part 3: Service and Network Information (SNI) application

Part 4: Road Traffic Message (RTM) application

Part 5: Public Transport Information (PTI) application

Part 6: Location referencing applications

o        ISO/TS 24530:2006, Parts 1 to 4, Traffic and Travel Information (TTI) -- TTI via Transport Protocol Experts Group (TPEG) Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Part 1: Introduction, common data types and tpegML

Part 2: tpeg-locML (Location Referencing, XML)

Part 3: tpeg-rtmML (Road Traffic Message, XML)

Part 4: tpeg-ptiML (Transit Information, XML)

These published standards are now all up for review. In addition to these, there are several other sub-parts draft standards for other applications, which are still under development and not yet published:

o        ISO/TS 18234:2006, Parts 7 to 10

Part 7: Parking information (PKI) application (TPEG-PKI_1.0/001)

Part 8: Congestion and Travel-Time Information (CTT) application (TPEG-CTT_1.0/001)

Part 9: Traffic Event Compact (TEC) application (TPEG-TEC_1.0/001)

Part 10: Weather information (WEA) application (TPEG-WEA_1.0/001)

o        ISO/TS 24530:2006, Parts 5 to 7

Part 5: tpeg-pkiML (Parking Lot Information, XML)

Part 6: ctt ML (Congestion / Travel time Information, XML)

Part 7: tpeg-weaML application (Weather Information, XML)

The TPEG standards originated from two proposals in September 2002. The European organisation CEN proposed that TPEG be used for incident and regulatory information, public transport information and location referencing information applications. The Japanese proposal was to use TPEG for applications in parking lot information and congestion and travel time information.

Both of these proposals were taken on board along the two routes of binary decoding and XML decoding. Since then further applications have been proposed as described above.

Further information can be found at the Traveller Information Services Association, http://www.tisa.org/, which evolved from the former TPEG Forum in 2008.

ITS Radar International will continue to monitor developments in TPEG

Key words: Geographic information, Standard, Traffic centre, Traffic information,