Objective

Establishment of standard data exchange formats for ground transportation would yield significant benefits – allowing for easier data sharing across organizations, and across different software applications within an organization. NCHRP Project 20-64 is undertaking the development of TransXML – a family of broadly accepted public domain eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schemas for exchange of transportation data. The project is focusing on four key business areas: Survey/Road Design, Transportation Construction/Materials, Highway Bridge Structures, and Transportation Safety. However, it is envisioned that TransXML will ultimately encompass a broader set of schemas for other transportation business areas.

Project Overview

In Phase 1, Cambridge Systematics and its partners reviewed existing transportation data exchange formats and identified initial focus areas for TransXML based on an assessment of business needs and opportunities.

In Phase 2, we are working with a broad array of stakeholders to develop XML schemas through an open, collaborative process. This process began in November 2004 and will run through the summer of 2005.

Recognizing that transportation data standards development is a long-term commitment, this project will also recommend a future organizational framework for continuing the important work on TransXML and build on the foundation that is to be established.

Our Approach

The key elements of our approach are:

• Focusing efforts on the data exchange needs with the highest potential payoff
• Bringing in-depth knowledge of business processes, data and software applications in the initial TransXML business areas to the table
• Following a sound technical process to define the scope of business needs to be met, specify and formally model data requirements, and develop data structures following W3C-compliant XML schema
• Working towards consensus across a broad array of stakeholders from the public and private sectors and the academic community

Project Results

The anticipated results of this project will be an initial set of XML schema that will support highway safety analysis, crash reporting, bridge structural analysis and design, and highway construction project status information sharing. The project will also be recommending incremental improvements to LandXML, a successful existing XML schema for highway geometric design that is maintained by http://www.LandXML.org.

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