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Frances Harrison	Need to Avoid Duplication with NHTSA Efforts Posted: Friday, July 23, 2004 9:13 AM (EST) As of this date, the TransXML safety team is attempting to identify and learn about existing efforts to develop Crash Records and Highway Information Safety Analysis schema. Information about these other efforts will be used to refine the scope for schema development to avoid duplication of work and provide the greatest benefit from the research. If you are aware of other efforts in these areas, please post this information. We are aware of substantial efforts by NHTSA (working in conjunction with JusticeXML) to develop uniform crash records schema. The schedule for public release of this work has not been determined. The NHTSA work appears to overlap substantially with the scope of the TransXML crash records schema scope. As a result, adjustments to the work plan may be warranted.
Steve Brown	Field Crash Report Schema Posted: Friday, August 06, 2004 3:44 PM (EST) The state of Nebraska is also looking to exchange crash report data within its state boundaries.  The Nebraska Dept. of Roads (NDOR) has identified more than  17 different crash information systems within the state that would benefit greatly from an XML crash reporting schema. Nebraska’s cities have  crash information systems, our state police has a system, our larger counties all have systems that need to share crash data. An XML crash data schema is import both for inter-state use as well as intra-state use.
Ken Yang	Need to Avoid Duplication with NHTSA Efforts Posted: Monday, December 06, 2004 5:10 PM (EST) The ComCARE Alliance ACN Data Set Working Group has published a draft XML-based automatic crash notification (ACN) data standard. Link is here  http://www.comcare.org/research/news/releases/011205acnstandard.html
Martha Florey	Need to Avoid Duplication with NHTSA Efforts Posted: Monday, December 06, 2004 5:26 PM (EST) Wisconsin has been working on data improvement from a unified public safety perspective.  Our TraCS project and Traffic Records Coordinating Committee have identified coordinated data collection as a major issue.  Law enforcement officers collect crash, citation and criminal incident data in the course of their daily work.  On an annual basis this is about 130,000 crashes, 1,000,000 citations and several million incident reports in Wisconsin.   Whatever shema is developed should take this workload distribution into account. Enforcement command staff make resource allocation decisions based upon  information about high-risk locations based upon citation activity as well as crash history.  Indeed, crash location may be driven in part by citation activity elsewhere on the network.  Citation location is problematic but can be addressed by reporting policies that may require exact X/Y coordinates or just addresses.  Enforcement officers need real-time access to crash and citation data for daily operations, as well as access to multiple years of data for long-term trend analyses.  It is well-documented that data collection improves if the data are used by the collectors.  Whatever is decided about the scope of this project, the decision should include attention to the business needs of the data collectors.  For purposes of State Highway Safety Office analyses and for behavior researchers, the data schema decided herein should be organized to provide all possible relevant data about crash causation and outcomes.
Al Butler	Need to convey value domains Posted: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 10:45 PM (EST) Virtually every state has a standard crash report form that is usually modified a little every year.  While the basic facts contained on these forms is relatively consistent from state to state, they differ in detail and value domains.  For example, a “7” for Weather Condition at Time of Crash in one state may be equivalent to a “3” in another state, or may have no equivalent at all; e.g., snow in Florida or dust storm in New York.  Thus, an important element of any useful multi-state data exchange mechanism, or a national data mining application, is the ability to translate from one value domain to another.  Associated with this requirement is the need to deal with fields and values that are “almost” the same, and to deal with fields that exist in one data set and not another.  Moving data around using XML is trivial compared to these other elements of any useful standard, which must include aspects of a translation application in addition to a data set specification.
Eric Ziering	Need to Avoid Duplication with NHTSA Efforts Posted: Thursday, December 09, 2004 12:51 PM (EST) Ken, thanks for posting this.   The ACN standard appears to be a thoughtful, simple DTD-based specification of the type that would benefit from definition and broad acceptance of more in-depth standards such as those envisioned for TransXML.  We'll keep this in mind as we proceed.
Carl Gonder	Duplicative Efforts & Data Dictionaries Posted: Thursday, December 16, 2004 7:07 PM (EST) A number of commenters have already made some of the points to follow, but I want to emphasize several of those points: 1. The Global Justice Extensible Markup Language (XML) Data Model (Global JXDM) working group, sponsored by U.S. Department of Justice and the Integrated Justice Information Systems (IJIS) Institute, currently contains nothing specific to traffic collisions, but the group appears interested in finding partners to assist in adding this to an already extensive schema/model. 2. FARS has, I believe, already implemented an XML schema and data model in their 2004 reporting system, and my discussions with them also indicate an interest in not duplicating efforts (NOTE: I believe their effort may have reached completion). 3. For the most part, data elements along with their definitions and values will come from existing sources such as D16 and D20. These are a moving target and subject to periodic change, as will the XML standard that is derived from these sources. As was pointed out by another reveiwer, many states have their own unique definitions and/or values. 4. Automated crash notification via on-board vehicle transmitters is probably also evolving around multiple standards.
John Carrico	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Friday, December 17, 2004 1:51 PM (EST) Need to Avoid Duplication of efforts from multiple sources. I feel that we need to consider any and all XML Schemas that have been developed by all Public Safety Agencies with a focus on the FARS Schema. All agencies will have to make modifications to a new national standard regardless of what they currently have. We need to be aware that not all agencies will comply with these national standards. Every effort needs to be made so agencies understand the importance to national standards. We are all aware that not all agencies are adhering to the MMUCC standards. This requires that we compile a comprehensive list of Collision and Citation data elements that meets every agency’s needs. After the compilation of the data elements, we need to ensure that all data elements are tagged properly.
Pete d'Oronzio	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Friday, December 17, 2004 3:01 PM (EST) It is true that not all agencies are adhering to the MMUCC standards.  However, I'm not so sure that adapting the XML Schema to support those agencies is a good idea.  I think that it would be more appropriate to define reasonable conversion rules from the non-compliant formats to the MMUCC standard.  A lot of effort has gone into creating MMUCC and D16.  Creating a schema that allows for other sets of values would be a step backwards on the road to national data interoperability.
Michael Manore	CONSIDERATION OF 3D-RELATED DATA Posted: Friday, December 17, 2004 5:37 PM (EST) The Visualization Task Force that I chair has members who's profession it is to recreate accurately accidents involving vehicles from all modes of transportation.  The interest with this Trans-XML initiative is that they have long been interested not only in better standards of precision and visual representation of the evidence they bring into courtrooms, but also to have more shareable and precise data that is captured at crash sites.......which sets the stae for their ability to create visual recreations that carry the engineering standards required to stand up in court.  Improved information captured at the crash site will improve recreatability. The Point:   As the project team moves ahead in developing the 2D schema for Crash Reports, we ask that you consider their potential evolution into eventual 3D/4D Schema for Crash Reports. We would be pleased to provide specifics as your team requires them.   Thank you.   Michael Manore, P.E.
Marcus Wigan	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Sunday, December 19, 2004 12:54 PM (EST) One of the major resources worth reviewing is the OECD RP7 Protocols for InDepth Crash recording for motorcycles. The US has taken an active part in this large process,and 5 European countries and Thailand have all done large scale trials. It offers a fine mix of documentary and item coverage, and has the benefit of dealing with an area of very high priority in safety terms, as well as a well tested InDepth Crash coverage process and record system. It would be highly desirable to include an Indepth Crash protocol - this offers a very well documented basis. The Chair of the TRB Motorcycle Committee (David Thom) was the reviewer of the Thailand application, and would be a fine resource to use. The entire protocol is available locally (to the US) from Dynamic Research. I plan to raise this and TransXML awareness at the M/c Committee
Eric Ziering	Need to Avoid Duplication with NHTSA Efforts Posted: Friday, January 07, 2005 9:16 AM (EST) Martha - you've made an excellent point that should influence our thinking on sample applications for the Crash Records schema.  In addition, to the extent we can use TransXML as a “vehicle” to broaden the availability and extend the use of valuable agency data, the project can also communicate the importance of data timeliness and quality to a broader set of constituents.
Eric Ziering	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Friday, January 07, 2005 9:23 AM (EST) Thanks, Marcus - I will contact David and follow up with him directly.
Eric Ziering	CONSIDERATION OF 3D-RELATED DATA Posted: Friday, January 07, 2005 9:32 AM (EST) Michael - I suspect that any serious attention to these issues will be beyond the scope of the current effort, but we can certainly make an effort to document and provide placeholders reflecting these issues in the project reports and schema files, respectively.
Mary Jensen	Need to convey value domains Posted: Friday, February 04, 2005 2:03 PM (EST) Although Iowa infrequently changes our crash report, the differing values amongst states is an excellent point.  A desription/definition of the data collected for each field and the valid values will continue to be an issue that needs to be dealt with.
Mary Jensen	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Friday, February 04, 2005 2:54 PM (EST) I claim no expertise in XML, especially GML.  However, it is important that the experts are heard from.  Are people active in these areas responding to the forum?  Has there been any contacts with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)  http:www.oasis-open.org   Or Legal XML JTC/Court Filing Group, although I believe the Legal XML may be a part of the Oasis group.    I agree with Carl Gonder regarding Global Justice XMLXD and believe this effort should stay in concert with GJXML.
Pete d'Oronzio	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Friday, February 04, 2005 4:13 PM (EST) I work a lot with XML, though not GML.  Our crash analysis software uses XML for almost all transaction types.  We also use XSL-FO for pdf generation and SVG for graphic display (both XML formats).  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we use an XML structure to provide a “normalized“ view of crash data across various state agencies' formats.  This enables us to provide standard reports across disparate data types and values.  Most recently, we've just about completed a MMUCC normalizer, so that any crash data can be viewed as though it were MMUCC, without converting the data itself.  Thus, my interest in the work of this group. It seems that the discussion in this list has been more about the data that will be represented, and how it relates to other XML standards, then how it will be represented and used.  I posted a question a while back about the intended use of the xml. (transferring large amounts vs small data sets vs something else)  I've been holding back a little here, until a discussion involving use of the data begins... perhaps some of that discussion should occur now? -pete
Paul Embley	Scope of Crash Report Schema Posted: Monday, February 07, 2005 8:52 PM (EST) The OASIS LegalXML Integrated Justice TC has been part of the Global XML effort (aka Dept of Justice XML, and GJXDM).  The Court's JTC has also been involved, and we've begun serious work with the OASIS Emergency TC which has done the CAP standards and is working on the EDXL.  Additionally we're working with DHS Disaster Mgmt, DHS CIO Office (Metadata group) and DHS Office for Interoperability and Compatability.  And finally we're working with ComCARE, the IEEE 1512 group, and the NHTSA people on their XML effort.  Yes, this is more than a full-time job, quite overwhelming at times, but worth the effort.  We don't want the GJXDM to be all things to all people, but we definately want to coordinate and cross-polinate our efforts with other worthwhile efforts.