Smart City Challenge Information Session 1 Transcript

Data Architecture Standards

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Please go ahead Sir.

Good afternoon everyone. This is the first webinar on the beyond traffic webinar. And we are happy to have you here.

As we talk about the data architecture and standards related to smart cities.

Today what I would like to go over is to set the stage in the Smart city challenge. I will be doing that. Then we will move on to some of the vision elements intelligence urban analytics architectures and standards. We will close with where you can get more information.

Setting the stage, the Smart city challenges about trying to encourage that is to perform their best and brightest ideas with the most creative and innovative ways to address the challenges in their cities. We look to how we address emerging data technologies and applications and how they can be integrated with existing systems in a city to address transportation challenges.

We will demonstrate how to advance data and the applications that can be used to reduce congestion travelers say protect the environment respond to climate change is connect on service to communities etc.

This is a highlight and why we are jumping into the webinar so quickly. The department released this on December this on December 7 and phase 1 is due December 4. From that we will move quickly to select up to five smart so it city challenge finalist providing them with $100,000 to define concepts. They will then be provided the opportunity to submit proposals for the Smart city challenge finalists. We have funding for $10 million to support the Smart city.

On we are looking at a Smart city and advanced technologies we are looking at connected vehicles automation Internet of things machine learning the data mobility law of demand. How we bring these things together in a city and bring an established benefits. There will be vast improvements in's safety to omissions in fuel savings to provide better access to jobs in the communities, to provide transportation costs reduction and improve the accessibility and mobility.

The US DOT vision for Smart city recognizes that each city is unique in our journey at turbulence and has a unique needs that their demonstration will be tailored to address. The department sent out a vision elements to do identified however area would use the advanced technologies and integrate them. That plays a critical role in safety, mobility and sustainability. To assist cities we identified 12 vision elements that are intended to provide a framework for the applicant to consider as a look at their best and brightest ideas for inner-city.

We have identified 12 different vision elements and categorize them in priority without the next level of priority looking at how do you provide innovative approaches to urban transportation in terms of user focus and mobility services how you bring strategic business partnerships together to enable some of these opportunities? How do you leverage the grant -- great? Our citizens involved in this society? Finally we have underlying elements that support the Smart city. We will talk a lot about that today. We provide security for data flow and smartly and use.

Today we will talk specifically about [ Inaudible ] urban analytics and the architecture standards. With that I will handed over to Dan Morgan.

Great. Thank you. First we will go over the intelligent sensor-based infrastructure. The Smart city challenges based on the findings of the department and traffic report. This info graphic comes from that report in chapter 3 called how we will better. In the op traffic we identified the trains in terms of data and applications for that data to help transportation performed better weather is connecting vehicles, robotics, traveler information or as we see in aviation some of the next General transportation. Part of this life that I enjoyed is the part where we said the data is all around us. There is a great deal of data that is already available and smart transportation -- Smart cities offer the opportunity to increase the amount of data that is available. We must find ways to provide value exchanges around the data and with that data to work and make sure that that data is interoperable within a city and across a region and across the nation.

We will go into a little bit more about the intelligent sensor-based infrastructure.

This element talks about how we can use sensors to collect real-time data to make real-time decisions in situations for operations of performance. That data also allow them the opportunity to conduct for -- from the perspective and predictive studies. The information that we're generating for the public will give them better tools and data to make decisions about their own transportation. Ultimately they are not just connected vehicles. We see the sensors improve pedestrians, bicyclists and environmental data. Other information from other in a structure services is also available.

Ultimately unsuccessful smartly demonstration would integrate data with existing data. That will allow the city to improve the transportation network.

One of the more interesting things we see happening at the federal and a global level is the data policy is becoming an increasingly part of how we do value from our data. Not only -- in partnership with the public. It is a critical factor for the decision element. The federal state and local government recognized data as an asset they pursue policies to support developing and maintaining systems and connections to share this data. These policies support open sharing machine-readable data with public, service providers and other agencies.

And open transportation data ecosystem of built on the presumption of sharing it can improve public safety.

One example of how sensors do not just have to be vehicles is here. It is demonstrated from the Mexico City where drivers were able to share information about their location and movement. They used a little bit of social media to get this data out there and available. The data was shared by a website and have it real-time. The data was archived for use in later planning. The most important part of the story is that we see a value exchanges around data sharing. It does not have to be a piece of hardware that is on a car or embedded in a room or attached to a light pole. What weakens the that people are sensors. Where we have the opportunity to share sensitive data about our own movement we saw that there is a value of things for people willing to share the data. That results in less congestion.

Open this of a sensor network is made up of a trend. Some of the examples that we provided here are in the environmental monitoring the Environmental Protection Agency has the air now program is a network of over 3000 sensors around the country. What EPA has that has made sure that the data is available in a variety of content to allow the public, researchers and urban planners to get to that data easily during application programming.

We will see more in this presentation about how this is important to facilitating the flow of data and enabling these are the 200 data in a variety of useful waste

One of the things that we see a lot about right now is fixed infrastructure we are seeing things like EPA looking at their village green project. They have a park bench that a solar powered that has and air quality monitor. It is a small rugged data collection system that allows people to use their existing structure and creative ways to that's what is happening in the environment we think this is going to be a trend that is going to be greater in a Smart city. When we start at mobile sensors, connected vehicle or from a bicyclist or pedestrian they might be able to get a little bit more interesting data around patterns and help people are moving around the city. This will help us understand how this can help our operation.

Going back to the value exchange here, another great example is from the health industry. In this case there was accompanying they change their name and are not proper appellate health, they provided patients with a wireless chip on their inhaler. The patient may choose what they want to share. And can be data from the sensor on the inhaler or aggregated location information. The patient also to those who gets to see their data they can inform their healthcare provider when they are in the office or they can donate their data in an anonymous form to a larger community of healthcare researchers of participating clinical trials.

Business model -- this is a place where we look at ways that we can have engaged conversation with the citizens who are going to be participating in a very different way. It is not just the user of the system but also a provider of data into the system. We are questions that are open and worth exploring as part of this decision element in in terms of what of the potential roles for connected vehicles, smartphones, labels, transit media and other transportation related components beyond the connected vehicles?

One of the things that we are also seeing as governments are collecting and sharing data for a variety of applications that building data for others. What we are seeing is repositories or travel service -- surveys. We're keeping GPS tracks and the survey participant demographics. This helps us understand travel habits and behaviors. Similarly, there is real-time data sharing across integrated corridors. There is previous work that has been done and there are applications for users policymakers and researchers. The trick here is that we want to have one copy of the data that we can apply a variety of roles to to allow public use files, detailed enabled files so that we can get the appropriate use to a variety of stakeholders who may be interested in this data.

For more information about open data policies, IDS research data, open source or what we think at the US DOT . We have provided a variety of links for this. You may contact me, my contact number is on the slide.

I will continue into the next vision element which is urban analytics.

We just spent a lot of time talking about the increase in data that we will be funding as we move to a Smart connect is that he. In that environment that is and citizens will be increasingly able to share use and leverage data sets to address complex and urban problems that improve current operations or capabilities. Urban analytics create value from the data that is collected from the connected vehicles connected citizens and sensors throughout the city or available on the Internet using information generated by private companies. We can use this to predict future conditions and the potential benefit of implementing different operational strategies

Something that can help cities get through this process is the national Institute of standards and technologies the data reference architecture. We have a lot unconnected data systems that are out there today. This has put together a set of definitions, use cases and requirements that address the security and privacy considerations of the data WorldPerks dictator reference architecture can help cities look through the implications of streaming data, Arcadia -- archived data from an end for --

What we mean by urban analytics?

We're talking about the real -- real-time data from existing sensors. From operations planning future arising planning etc. across planning horizons.

Other things that we can look at our studies of travel patterns. We can validate and calibrate transportation and travel models. We can look at quarter operations. We can measure mobility and reliability performance in a much more detailed level. We can understand travel behavior and develop travel demand management policies that are much more granular level than we can today. If you think this is an important area to explore,

If you have of work so fed up that has cut off a portion of your bike lane, if you have a strong sensor network you can understand not only how the vehicles are moving but also have pedestrians are moving. This is an opportunity because if you are understanding how they are moving around his home and see that people are making choices that may produce that year, you may be able to try alternative designs whenever sober is a behavioral science application that can help us make better policies when we design works of them providing shortsighted and other kinds of information to prompt folks.

There are some links here to help you understand urban analytics. Disabling about the big data architecture the travel model improvement program, the IDS open source software and some information about integrated corridor management.

For the rest of the presentation this afternoon I and my colleague will be talking about the concept of an architecture and underlying standards that would be very useful in this context.

One of the main reasons why this is an important element of anybody's project concept in that vehicles and travelers tend to move broadly across regions. Uniform operation is something that is accessible to everyone. For those of you that use transportation system today, you are used to that experience that you might have anyplace you may travel in North America. The signage, it is all consistently done throughout North America. It makes it easy for people to use traditional transportation systems. You will have a comment experience using common transportation. What we're trying to do is bring that same kind of common opportunity that everyone has to to the extent by the US DOT Smart city demonstration site will divide and demonstrate integration of its IDS systems analysis of the smart thing for the IDS intelligent transportation systems formed the foundation for a large collected -- code inactive installation.

This should be designed -- defined using existing networking. Where new standards are meeting the should be fully documented.

As part of the work we have done in the past related to intelligent transportation systems, we have developed something that is referred to as the national architecture. Provides a common framework to integrate solutions. One of the main advantages of this national IDS concept is that it gives practitioners eight 8 Common Way to document their installations which helps to communicate [ Inaudible ] for improvements. People are expecting common experiences in the transportation activities over the entire North America. Having a common architecture underlying that will help them do that. Recently I connected vehicle reference implementation has been created to include information sport development of fully interoperable vehicle architectures. We are extending this concept of eight national architecture to these community tees -- communities [ Inaudible ]. Smart city demonstration sites will use the architecture published and IDS standards. The idea is that the elements of a system will be expected to move broadly and consequently will expect to have a common experience with our communications just as drivers of vehicles expect that a common experience and the safely and efficiently move through controlled intersections where they travel.

The architecture has been used to develop regional architecture in all 50 states and 300 metropolitan areas. It leverages the Federal Highway Administration's planning and operation program. It is used to connect planning goals objectives and performance measures with IDS services. It is more than just a plan to build something, it is actually integrated into the planning and operational bases of project like this again, the common way of describing and documenting because of projects has helped greatly to facilitate sharing of information and sharing experiences

Why is national IDS architecture and engineering practice for complex systems and also because of its value it is actually been included in registration as a requirement. Each one of the operating agencies that make use of Federal Highway Administration grants are back into documents and maintain documentation of their project installations using this common language that is the IDS architecture. It helps facilitate interoperable vehicles. They should expect their project elements to co-mingle and interoperate with other regions or areas project elements.

Vehicles operate throughout the region. Obviously everyone who is involved in transportation understand that. What is done in one region needs to be done is a way in another region. They have seen the kind of fundamental layers of projects on standards and other common elements like that should help to [ Inaudible ] that is expected. At the very least the elements of a project system should function as they are intermingled without interference.

The national IDS architecture provide a common framework for planning dividing and integrating IDS. Within the context of the architecture, there's a number of different ways of looking at a project it provides a logical architecture that indicates how elements of a system interact and cooperate and support each other. Gives you a physical view of a particular project. It shows the objects that make up the project and the information flows that are exchanged among those objects. There are elements of that that are entered packages that are available for people to flow together. This is intended to help people approach undefined project [ Inaudible ]. They take advantage of experience and have the ability to offer information from the beginning of the project. It also provided a great deal of cleavage between the available standards to help people find the objects and information flows that make up their particular installation.

Information about the IDS natural architecture and connected vehicle reference can be found at the web link at the bottom of this flight.

's people take us through the web bash through the rest of this material.

Good afternoon. As well described ultimately we need to think of the IDS system as itself a complex system of including the infrastructure, the vehicles in it, travelers with their own devices and the system then that's within the greater system which represents the transportation system. That integrators is some which represents the information structure of the Smart city.

In order for these systems to function well, and interoperate with each other, they need to be coherent, well thought out and fully trans. Two users and developers.

One of the ways we do this is by dividing common standards.

Surface transportation needs a vehicle operators to recognize a red hot, as a stop sign. In North America we have agreed that we will drive on the right side of the road. That may not be important, which side we picked but it is very important that we all think these inside. That seems obvious but when we think about doing something useful with all these massive data that can describe to us, unless that data is transmitted -- transmitted in an understandable language, we have not accomplished much. To support the IDS portion of this, within the architectures that we make available each of the interfaces are defined by standards. The vast majority of those are all the shelf networking standards. For those cases that we are talking about specific IDS resources we have developed and made available a number of standards. The infrastructures that standards covering center to field and center to center communications within the IDS infrastructure. These are communication amongst traffic signals will or integrate -- advanced transportation. In the connected vehicle environment we have a number of published in its, a lot of development remains underway. We expect to have published standards within the next few weeks. For other connected vehicle standard we expect that connected cities will look towards standards which were in draft form or development or will identify gaps where we have not actually begun development. For those cases it is very important that the developers document their needs and bring back to us and to the standard working group so that we can continue to improve the product and make it available to everyone. Go we also recognize the vehicle marketplace is global. We recognize that in general, IDS interests and connected vehicle are similar. We are looking for same form -- safer more efficient networks. We tried to take advantage and internationally harmonized standards. That runs markets for vehicles and equipment and also save a lot of labor. That way we can share the labor with other parties and the resulted in bit of money. There is certainly more than enough work to go around.

If we look at the connected vehicle family of standards that are available now, most of them are of the top at the application layer at the top of the stack. Those published versions are from 2014. There was an update I believe. The next version will be published here hopefully by the end of January. The J 2945 performance requirement for vehicle to vehicle safety broadcast can also be ready in January. Of it J 2949 standards are under development and will be available in the future. The one place that we have developed standards that support the lower layers is to support the vehicle to vehicle. The final content of those to support the rulemaking is currently available in a family of standards still marked as draft at the bottom of his that we have to 11 the widget is stable. At this point we do not envision any further updates being required.

To help build out the system architecture, to support your installation we have made available the tool -- this tool.

Version 2.1 is current as of yesterday. These are available at the link at the end of the briefing the intent is that this will help anyone who wants to build their own system architecture that meets their own needs. If you are in Minneapolis I suspect you are interested in snow removal than those in Miami Beach. We provide a venue where you pick and choose what you need to build architecture. We also recognize that an architecture means different things to different people. Someone at the institutional level has a great deal of interest in requirements between organizations. Of the port authority needed an agreement with an airport authority to make a smart connected city work?

The functional layer we think about on services we hope to provide and what do we want to do?

Someone might think about transit signal priority in the vehicle signage -- and vehicle signage.

The physical objects that may be incorporated within the black box we will need standardized interfaces that communicate between these capabilities. The final layer of the communications layer. That defines a set of protocols that allow standardized communication amongst elements of architecture that allow it to be implemented in a transparent and operable way. I can't over emphasize the point that wall made earlier. When we began with IDS in the 1990s and talk about infrastructures, interoperability was not as critical. A traffic signals the them in Iowa could easily operate differently than one in New York State. There is a minor inconvenience. Once vehicles and travelers move throughout North America the requirement for interoperability changes drastically. It is absolutely critical that no matter where you go when there is a safety warning to be received you received it and you know what it means and react properly. Is more important than it ever has been. In order to do this we need to make compromises to make sure that the standards are truly suitable for everybody.

In order to implement this we developed the set it tool. This diagram is an example. If you go to the website there are several hundred of these diagrams that describe many many possible capabilities you might incorporate into your architecture you may find something that you can modify or something that we can do better. That is the case, please let us know. We also provide same-day responses to questions keep in mind that we developed this as a reference for this is a starting point for suitable architecture for each region that eventually would be linked together to cover all of North America. Theoretically, any place you could possibly drive the service to vehicle, the United States. Away from the artist roll down. We cannot speak for other sovereign nations but certainly we are cooperating very aggressively with Canada and Mexico to do her best to get you [ Inaudible ] upgradability across the borders. We're trying but we cannot guarantee that. We do recognize that it is important with the amount of trade across North America that we also have the availability of all the services.

This last line is out of the nose of funding availability. We envision that the demonstration site will provide a demonstrate integration of IDS systems with the other systems that comprise the Smart city. Remember the Smart city ID system is a system of systems. The IDS system is part of the transportation system. We further on expect that rather than reinvent the wheel, no pun intended, we would use existing networking an idea standards when available to the extent you need the --. We provide the architecture and standards as a reference. These are products that were developed with a great deal of stakeholder import we intend to continue that practice. We welcome all the info we can get someone find something that could be done better and they don't tell us for anybody else, we cannot have a nationwide. On the last line we have a series of links that will provide you more information. At this point we have completed the webinar material. I think we will close and open ourselves up to questions. I believe the operator has instructions on how to do that.

Thank you for joining us. I think we just posted as a reminder tomorrow and connective vehicles and automation seminar. On Friday we will talk about user focus of mobility. And on Monday we will talk about the Smart city challenge application and selection process thank you very much. Now we will target into questions and answers. Another couple questions already.

We will go through and start to answer what we can.

The first question is about IDS infrastructure and sharing and restrictions related to that. I guess I was at this point in time the comment would be let us know what you need and then the department will discuss whether or not that is possible to do in the context of the research program and the challenges that we are trying to achieve. We talked about yesterday, about there may be regulation changes or things like that locally, I don't think -- we have it talk specifically about this. We will take this and talk to some other folks to see if there is something specific we're going to do. Otherwise I think function identified where they want to bring the vision and if there's something restricting them from doing that they can point it out.

People should not break something that is working. Think about what might need to be changed in the future to make it more easily integrated.

That next question is about Nebo. Right now we would still have to follow policies and practices in place. It is a research project but it depending bashed but depending on what the vision is, but documentation would need to happen.

At this stage of the proposal, we've should be considered. Just tell us what you need.

We cannot offer guarantees that we can arrange for all of your needs.

Sorry.

Can you repeat [ Inaudible ].

We will gives on the web shortly. We plan to have like we had at the form yesterday, we had a vision yesterday on urban statistics. We plan to do surely in the new year we don't have a real date yet. It was on that topic.

That was the last question in the chat box right now.

Any other questions from anyone?

Please submit your questions via the chat pod.

We see multiple attendees typing on our screen. We wait just a moment to get these questions in so that we can answer any questions that they may have.

A lot of people are typing. If you have questions outside of the webinar, you can send your question to Smart city challenge at your question to Smart city challenge@DOT.gov. We will make sure you get answers.

I would also encourage you to look at the links on the last slide player -- last slide. Feel free to download the tools available at no cost and with no restriction. You do need to have a copy of the Visio copy 32-bit version. Other than that everything in their is available with no restriction.

Brian, do you want to take that first one back

I guess what we would say is that the applicants have 30 pages to tell us how they plan to death with their vision is an we put out vision -- different vision elements. We're looking at things we want to see the applicant need to choose on their own how much they want to spend talking about how the architecture plays into their vision.

Okay. It's important not to bog down the details. You must understand that whatever your project is, you're going to be able to articulated in common language and show how it will become part of his much larger deployment of intelligent transportation and Smart city technology. The next question.

We do that people will need a whole portfolio of wireless communication media. We are exploring using satellite Bluetooth as an appropriate transport mechanism in particular cases. [ Inaudible ] certainly everyone should understand that everything is in play. Everything needs to be welded together to get the communication capacity that is needed to support these new -- these new city ideas.

The extent of ideas question. This is a high level vision document with 30 pages. There are 12 elements and their priority. In our vision narrative we talk specifically about the different items we want addressed. I would refer you to the vision narrative and the technical merit questions and make your choice of how to spend your time addressing the notice.

It is a little too early to talk about what we will specifically have in the second phase notice.

This question is regarding other standards we maintain a cooperation agreement. We make standards available with the exception of the upcoming bid to the role, we do not expect any of these standards to be mandatory. To the extent that in your -- let me phrases carefully -- we are agnostic regarding which products might be best for a particular interface. If there is a case where somewhere in the architecture and standard there is the most appropriate standard then we would not have any reason to object to that. We make standards available to the IDS community. We do not mandate them except to the extent that we envision mandating them to ensure North American operability. Interoperability is the keyword. No transportation system is completely closed. Elements are coming and going all of the time. Or it also work well there has to be a fundamental communication. Someone has to choose a standard to follow. Is usually a consensus but usually one is chosen.

There are cases where more than one standard might be appropriate. All the things that are commercial are not necessarily in the public interest. To the extent that they affect the efficiency state the and environmental sustainability the live we generally look for standards and consensus by regulation.

That next question is restrictions that may apply to data information from a third party or private service provider.

I would say that to the extent that you see third parties or private service providers playing in your vision the narrative that you're putting together should address how you would address the equities from the private sector to and make a proposal for how you would operate in a system of varying terms of use but still try to maximize the utility and openness of the data flowing around the proposal. Detail information is probably something that is for later on in the process.

Respect for copyrighted material is important.

Does anyone else have any questions? As a reminder, please use the chat pod function to ask those questions.

With that, thank you all very much for your time this afternoon. Thank you to all the speakers. We appreciate and we wish you all well as we go through this Smart city challenge. We will be talking to any of you over the coming days.

Thank you very much.

Have a great afternoon.

That concludes at our conference for today. You may now disconnect.

[ Event Concluded ]