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Provide data visualization and analysis applications to build support for data archiving and transportation ITS and Operations overall.

The Regional Integrated Transportation Information System in the Maryland, Washington DC region gains support through the visualization tools and easy access they provide to their users.

Date Posted
10/02/2012
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Identifier
2011-L00583

A Virtual Tour of the University of Maryland's Innovative Method of Collecting, Archiving and Disseminating Transportation and Transit Data for the DC Metro Area

Summary Information

The CATT Laboratory at the University of Maryland has been developing the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) over the past decade, beginning with the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and expanding to cover states along the East Coast. RITIS incorporates data from several types of sources including transit AVL, traffic cameras, crash data, emergency responder dispatch, and weather information. These data come from several agencies and in unstandardized formats across systems. RITIS standardizes the raw data from the various agencies and displays it through multiple visualization tools in order to allow participating agencies to improve incident response, as well as traveler information.

Lessons Learned

The Director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland who manages the multi jurisdiction and system RITIS archive for the Washington DC region explains the success of the RITIS system despite common complaints of others such as "we can't afford to collect the data we need", "nobody cares about or understands ITS and operations", and "we can't get data that is of acceptable quality." This is often the result of not properly communicating the importance of the data, not showing all the benefits and value of the data, only using each type of data for the specific use it was collected for, and not maximizing the use of the data. Data tends to be stove piped. The director argues, as demonstrated by the RITIS System, that an alternative approach is to focus on visualization and easy accessibility of the information:

  • Give everyone a real reason to want to collect data and support your programs.
  • Provide data fusion of information from different sources and systems so users have a more complete picture of the transportation system than they would have just using their own resources or archives of individual systems.
  • Provide easy, free access to all of the data (or as much as you legally can) to everyone.
  • Develop interesting, fun, useful applications for the data that make people aware of what you are doing.

This results in others seeing the benefits of the transportation data services and gaining a better understanding of how ITS and operations benefits the transportation system and responds to real time events and changing conditions.

A Virtual Tour of the University of Maryland's Innovative Method of Collecting, Archiving and Disseminating Transportation and Transit Data for the DC Metro Area

A Virtual Tour of the University of Maryland's Innovative Method of Collecting, Archiving and Disseminating Transportation and Transit Data for the DC Metro Area
Source Publication Date
06/23/2011
Author
Michael Pack, Director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology, University of Maryland
Publisher
ITS America Webinar Series 06/22/2011

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