English title: Quality of on-trip road traffic information : scientific concept of the colloquium. The positive impact of road traffic information on traffic safety and on the efficiency of the road traffic system can only be achieved when drivers do believe and follow the information sent. This essential driver’s acceptance of the service is tightly linked to the continuous positive experience with the up-to-dateness, liability and correctness of the received traffic information. Furthermore, the individually felt benefit of the driver is a major prerequisite for the economic success of commercial traffic information services. Therefore the improvement of the quality is one of the major challenges for traffic information services in the upcoming years. A number of projects and initiatives are currently dealing with the questions of quality of road traffic information. On 23 and 24 March 2011 the Bundesanstalt für Strassenwesen (BASt), the Federal Highway Research Institute, has organised a colloquium 'Quality of on-trip road traffic information' to have these current studies and initiatives presented and discussed with other experts. These present proceedings summarize the contributions and results of the colloquium. Many stakeholders are involved in the provision of traffic information. The value chain of traffic information starts with the collection of necessary data on events and continues via the data processing and interpretation to the generation of the message itself. The messages are transmitted through various media and received by the end user exeimpli gratia in a navigation device. Each of the steps of a value chain can be performed by different partners — public and private ones — as well as by the same partner, too. The complexity of interaction between the partners can therefore be very high — as of the quality management process. During the colloquium two different views on quality have been presented: The data quality that proves the correctness and up-to-dateness of information compared to a ground truth, either at the very last point of the value chain or at interfaces between the partners; The process quality that focuses on the loss-free performance of all involved partners along the whole value chain. Both viewpoints help to understand what today’s problems of quality are and how different measures for its improvement should be arranged. On the one hand, there might be accurate information about a traffic related incident at one or more steps of the value chain but there are losses in quality due to an insufficient technical and organisational interface between two partners so that the end user does not receive the correct information. A prominent example of this is a wrong interpretation of the received information by the navigation device, but such a lack of process quality can happen at every step of the process chain, too. One important measure for the improvement of process quality is standardisation — plus the assessment that the standards are likewise interpreted and implemented on each step of the value chain. On the other hand, the data quality (in terms of accuracy) might be poor from the very beginning of the value chain so that the end user does not get the right information if none at all. Prominent examples are all the traffic jams that are not announced or announced but non-existent. One important measure to improve these situations is the improvement of incident and event detection. In the proceedings there are presentations that analyse the current state, propose methods to measure data quality and identify possible ways to improve data and process quality. Open questions still are: How can the process quality of the whole value chain be controlled if many different partners are involved? Who is monitoring the whole chain? Is there a need for such a central entity at all? Or is it sufficient if each partner does a proper "incoming goods” and “outgoing goods inspection"?; There is only one ground truth but there is competition on the (quality of) information about ground truth. How can consistency between all providers be achieved of safety relevant information? Where should competition end and how can this been realised technically, economically and organisationally?; Which processes do we need in order to deal with partners that will not agree on common quality standards and their necessary processes (e.g. general information brokers that are not cross-linked in the traffic information scene)?; and, last but not least, how can the perception of the end user about the quality of different products be enhanced? Is the consumer able to distinguish the different quality levels of traffic information services? If not, what kind of help does the consumer need? A "European Traffic Information Services Assessment Programme" — compared to Euro NCAP for cars? The results of the colloquium shall feed the ongoing discussion on the improvement of on-trip road traffic information services. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting