Data specification is one of the themes of standardization in consortiums or associations for provision of information technology (IT) solutions in various domains including intelligent transportation systems (ITS), healthcare, publishing, science, statistics, manufacturing, distribution, finance, logistics and so on. Even when the communication protocol is the same for two center systems, they probably will not be able to perform valid interoperation. When interpretations of the same data differ between two centers, their dialog is meaningless. The purpose of this paper is to add to the knowledge of what we should standardize for open systems like ITS. Accordingly, the authors investigated how data specifications are standardized in various domains. They paid particular attention to the definitions of code representations. In order to find ways to develop data standards for open systems, the authors sought to clarify the problems with the current state of such methods and come up with a resolution for those problems. For this, they looked up the code representations that standardization consortiums or associations are actually using. The authors referred to the following sources: (1) Specification of structure of data dictionary by IEEE P1489, February 1999; (2) Expression of data elements for AHS by the research team S13 of AHSRA in Japan, 2000; (3) Expression of data elements for Road Communication Standards whose scope is a portion of the traffic management conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Road Bureau, August 2000; and (4) Expression of data entities from outside ITS, i.e., from RosettaNet, January 2001.
Abstract