Published technical specifications are not made from stone and CEN has a procedure requiring to review published technical specifications within 3 years after date of availability.

First 3 parst of DATEX are core documents for using it:

• Part 1 - Context and Framework
• Part 2 - Location Referencing
• Part 3 - Situation Publication

and they are already to be reviewed.

Part 1 - Context and Framework

In full name: CEN/TS 16157-1 Intelligent transport systems - DATEX II data exchange specifications for traffic management and information - Part 1: Context and Framework

This part defines sort of DATEX II DNA - core principles for building and using the DATEX II model in general.

Reading it is really hard - there are many levels of abstractions (data instance, XML representation of data, general UML classes, rules such classes must follow - so meta data about classes) but these things are important and are base for long term usability of DATEX II.

Here I expect a discussion about what UML version to use and what to what level we shall modify or keep existing rules.

Good news is, that not everybody going to use DATEX II in a system must be familiar with this part, but such document is really needed at the moment extensions and profiles are created.

Part 2 - Location Referencing

In full name: CEN/TS 16157-1 Intelligent transport systems - DATEX II data exchange specifications for traffic management and information - Part 2: Location Referencing

Part 2 defines, what options we have to say "where" in DATEX II language.

Currently it builds on TPEG-Loc, Alert-C (RDS-TMC location tables) and few more.

Personally I would invite OpenLR extension being adopted into this part.

Part 3 - Situation Publication

In full name: CEN/TS 16157-1 Intelligent transport systems - DATEX II data exchange specifications for traffic management and information - Part 2: Situation Publication

Situation publication provides core part of traffic information ontologoy, or in other words - what concepts incl. terms and definitions we shall use to describe traffic information. There are other parts of DATEX, focusing on specific domains, but Situation Publication is touching the most basic parts.

Personally, I do not expect big changes in this part.

Do we need DATEX II at all? YES!

One of possible results with CEN document review is to make it obsolete.

This is definitely not the case for DATEX, as it is nowadays referenced from many documents published by European Commission and without keeping the DATEX II documents valid, the referencing documents would be also invalid.

Do we need conversion to Europen Standard (EN)? YES!

CEN provides two options - extend the document as Technical Specification for another period, or convert it to European Standard.

Practically both solutions would work, but CEN working group has recommended to upgrade to EN for following reasons:

• DATEX II has wide deployment and proved itself as working solution - not all CEN documents reach such wide use.
• DATEX II is mature solution
• DATEX II is referenced in many European Commission documents, so it is playing important role in wider scope
• European Norm "sounds stronger" than Technical Specification, this makes use in some cases easier.

Czech next actions - support the proposal and consider active participation

As Czech representative in CEN TC 278/WG8 I am proposing following actions:

• Czech shall vote for given proposals to review all three parts and to convert them to EN
• Czech shall be actively participating in review of part 1 (Context and Framework).
• Czech shall be actively participating in review of part 2 (Location Referencing). Czech should propose inclusion of OpenLR in this part.
• Czech shall probably not participate actively in review of part 3, unless we find stronger interest and resources for this effort.

Does anything of this appeals to you? Do you have different opinion? Let me know, either in discussion bellow, using our Contact form or sending me an e-mail.

To submit changed position to CEN, I must know about it before March 17, 2015. But even later, there will be a lot of work (mostly reading existing documents) so do not hesitate to contact me even later.