TransportML platform for collaborative location-based services

Abstract

Currently, each geographical area benefits from a set of wide range of local services, usually provided by several local entities, such as snow clearance, road works, public transportation, waste collection, fire fighting, emergency rescue authorities, etc. Despite each service fulfilling its own assigned task, they often suffer from a lack of communication and cooperation among them. Indeed, each service collects road-related information that may be useful to other services. Sharing information collected by each service would allow the acquisition of more knowledge about the driving context that may help drivers making appropriate decisions and, therefore, increase and improve road safety. Recently, wireless communication technologies associated with global navigation satellite systems and location-based information systems are among the powerful technologies used to develop interoperable intelligent transportation systems applications. Furthermore, the evolution of service-oriented infrastructures enables information sharing between applications over the network. In this paper, a distributed platform, called TransportML, for services interaction and cooperation is presented. It is an extended XML platform based on service-oriented architecture principles to recognize, monitor, and collect service information and description over a network. A prototype is developed and tested in urban and highway areas and results are reported to show the benefit of using this platform for sharing road information as well as services’ interactions.