TPEG

The Transport Protocol Experts Group or TPEG, for short (pronounced T-Peg) was founded in 1997 by the European Broadcasting Union. It is a group of experts led by the EBU coming from all areas of the Traffic and Travel Information businesses, as well as broadcasting. The group developed the TPEG specifications for transmission of language independent multi-modal Traffic and Travel Information. Validation of the initial work was undertaken by the part-funded European Commission TPEG Project which had a 3 year duration.

The TPEG work was partly based on the work done with RDS-TMC, but TPEG data are human understandable as well as machine readable. In particular TPEG does not assume any large scale location or pre-coded phrase databases in any client receiving device.

Flavours of TPEG

TPEG currently comes in two "flavours". The TPEG binary data format is designed for transmission over DAB and DMB. tpegML is the XML implementation designed for use in editing systems and delivery via the Internet and DVB.

TPEG Applications

TPEG is a modular toolkit, standardised through CEN and ISO and consisting of the following applications:
* RTM - Road Traffic Message
* PTI - Public Transport Information
* Loc - Location referencing, used in conjunction with applicationsUnder development are also:
* PKI - Parking Information
* CTT - Congestion and Travel-Time
* TEC - Traffic Event Compact
* WEA - Weather information for travellers

RTM is an application that deals, as the name says with traffic information. It is a full application that can encode a wide range of road traffic information, from accidents, obstructions to congestion and delays. This application is currently specified in ISO TS 18234-4.

PTI is the natural counterpart to RTM, dealing with public transport from rail, bus to air traffic and ferry services. This application is currently specified in ISO TS 18234-5.

PKI is an application that will allow information about parking facilities to be transmitted. This application is currently at ISO TS 24530-5 Draft for Comments stage.

CTT is an application focused on providing information to drivers on congestion levels and journey times. This application is currently in the late design phase.

TEC is a compact application for traffic event information, aimed primarily at dynamic route guidance navigation devices. This application is currently in the early design phase.

TPEG Location Referencing

TPEG's main renown comes from its native Location Referencing approach, TPEG-Loc. Based to some degree on the ILOC approach, tpeg-locML or TPEG-Loc for the binary service, has been further developed and has added a large amount of sophistication to its ability to describe locations within networks. It principally is used by tpegML and TPEG applications, but has also been adopted by OTAP and Datex.

Design approach

In the early days of the TPEG development applications were designed in two halves. On the one hand there were coding experts and on the other designers. At that time the primary focus was on a binary delivery using DAB.

With the XML becoming more mainstream it was very quickly adopted by the TPEG developers who unified the two separate approaches. At the same time it was clear that XML provided another channel to deliver Traffic and Travel Information.

More recently TPEG developers have turned to UML to hold the conceptual content and to build new applications. Current work programmes include building UML extracts that will automatically generate the XML and binary specifications.

ee also

*Intermodal Journey Planner
*Transport Information Standards
* Transport standards organisations

External links

* http://www.tisa.org New Official Website of the TMC and TPEG Forum successor
* http://www.tpeg.org Official Website (being rebuilt)
* http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/projects/b_tpeg.php TPEG Draft Specifications
* http://www.itsregistry.org.uk UK ITS Registry - TPEG is registered [http://www.itsregistry.org.uk/content/_3291048e_1099913709386_26077_1_Index.html here]
* http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/data/TravelFeeds TPEG feeds made available by the BBC