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2025 01 30

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sarals61-volpe edited this page Mar 31, 2025 · 22 revisions

Thursday January 30, 2025 @ 3:00pm on Microsoft Teams

Slides

Please join the first collaboration meeting of 2025, as we enter our second year. We have a number of exciting things to share with you. The subgroups have been busy working on developing guiding principles for the specification development, preparing a field scan of relevant existing data standards and specifications, narrowing down major use case themes, and compiling a glossary of shared terms. We hope you’re able to join and provide feedback on the initial collaboration products.

Agenda

  • Welcome
    • Housekeeping
    • Context
    • Meeting Objectives
  • NC-BPAID Status Updates
  • Open floor for announcements
  • Discuss subgroup leadership changes
  • Subgroup updates
    • Data Practices
    • Specification Development
    • Outreach Subgroup
  • Present four deliverables:
    • Guiding Principles
    • Field Scan
    • Use Cases
    • Glossary
  • Closing

Notes

  • Meeting Objectives:
    • TRB Recap
    • Discuss subgroup changes and opportunities
    • Highlight initial Collaboration products
  • NC-BPAID Updates:
    • TRB Recap that took place in January in DC. NC-BPAID provided updates regarding our group activities in six committee meetings listed below. We also participated in a lectern session on ‘Enhancing Mobility for All: Updates on U.S. Department of Transportation Accessibility Initiatives and Innovative Mobility Strategies’ and had a meet and greet on Wednesday afternoon to get together and discuss our project.
      • Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Analysis Joint Subcommittee
      • Accessible Transportation and Mobility Committee
      • Geographic Information Science Committee
      • Bicycle and Pedestrian Data Joint Subcommittee
      • Bicycle Transportation Committee
      • Pedestrians Committee
  • Member Announcements:
  • Subgroup Leadership Changes:
    • The December proposal to launch the Outreach Subgroup passed and the subgroup is launching in February.
    • Outreach Subgroup: Kristen Nordback and Elwood Hanrahan, who have been leading the Data Practices Subgroup, are going to now lead the Outreach Subgroup to get it up and running.
    • Data Practices Subgroup: Jonah Chiarenza of the Volpe Center and Josh Role of ODOT are going to lead the Data Practices Subgroup.
    • Specification Development Subgroup: No leadership change.
    • The collaboration framework states that subgroup leaders are supposed to be voting members for an organization. The USDOT voting member is changing from Justyna to Jonah Chiarenza.
  • Subgroup Updates:
    • The updates will be given during the Products Presentations.
  • Product Presentations:
    • Field Scan:
      • The team looked at other specification efforts in the field that are similar to ours in terms of interoperability, or ways we want to exchange data across different formats and specifications. We also don’t want to duplicate work already done. Our scan is a lot shorter and more focused, and we will provide a copy to the collaboration.
      • The idea is that our specifications are as interoperable and interchangeable as possible with other specifications.
      • Interoperability: data that can be exchanged easily between systems because it’s similarly organized and formatted.
      • Interchangeability – the idea that the data is literally the same so one data set or field can we swapped for another.
      • Refer to the slides of this meeting (link at top of page) for examples of specifications most similar or most related to the specifications we are developing.
      • Question: Why other specifications weren't listed - FHWA's Bike Network, City GML, MDS?
      • Answer: Not sure about those specs in particular. The broader survey we did included more specs.
    • Use Cases:
      • The Data Practices Subgroup created a Word document of 24 use cases which is separated out by mode: 12 Pedestrian, 8 Bicycle, 4 Accessibility.
      • Then summarized use cases by the type of use case and created a matrix of 31 use cases grouped by type: 19 Research/Policy/Planning, 4 Public-Facing Tools, 8 Operations.
      • Further grouped by category – refer to slides and matrix for more details.
      • Two big categories came out of the groupings: Routing and Asset Inventory. Most of the use cases can be categorized in these two large categories.
      • Question: You only looked at the functional step by step, not the data that is required for each use case?
      • Answer: We only looked at the big picture. The other subgroups will look at the specifics of the data.
    • Guiding Principles:
      • The idea of a guiding principles document came about after a presentation by Brian Ferris from Google who spoke about GTFS. He discussed the guiding principles that they applied in developing GTFS. That gave us the idea of doing something similar, to think about the governance of the standard.
      • Discussed each guiding principle in the Guiding Principles document.
      • Other topics to possibly add to guiding principles (Anat Caspi):
        • Identifying that there is collective data governance and actual feedback loops and identifying them.
        • Everything that gets input must have an on the ground tested aspect to it.
        • Contextualizing the infrastructure data with lived experience.
        • That we have a barrier free contributor arena for the specification.
        • Add accessibility features like beacons, signals, and signage, braille displays.
      • Question: How is our line work going to interface with the motor vehicle road inventory world?
      • Answer (Paul Moser): This is something that will come out of conversations. There is a lot more overlap of the existing road network and how features are tied to the road network and when they are not. We will be looking at specific use cases and different levels of data maturity. Use cases of data will have different needs and maybe the same thing can be represented multiple ways for different profiles of users.
    • Glossary:
      • The glossary is where we will not just name, identify, organize and parse terms, but write them down and organize them.
      • The glossary has four columns – Class, Term, Definition and Source.
      • Some competing definitions can describe what is more or less the same term that falls under a class. The glossary is a tool that allows us to hold up a mirror to these terms and ask questions such as are these thins mutually exclusive or overlap? Are they fundamental?
      • Refer to the meeting slides for glossary examples.
      • The glossary will help us agree on definitions for physical things. Are the classes we define flexible enough to describe a lot of different types of variations on the theme in a way that is conducive to multiple use cases.
      • The Specification Development Subgroup will look into the questions:
        • What are the physical things that we really want to describe in the walking, cycling accessibility environment? What are the fundamental components? Define what those things are so they can be categorized, digitized, and then use to make further insights in the future.

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