Cross-industry group of the month:
Data, Systems and Telematics Standards Committee
RSSB standards committee unpacked
Liz DaviesProfessional Lead Data and Modelling Research, RSSB
The Data, Systems and Telematics Standards Committee (DST SC) is one of seven standards committees managed by RSSB. The standards developed by these committees in consultation with industry are there to enable an economic, innovative, healthier and safer railway.
The DST SC was established in September 2022, and was the first new standards committee to be set up for more than a decade. It addresses recognised gaps in industry oversight and standardisation in the fields of data, operational systems and the exchange of information between systems, referred to as telematics, with the aim of supporting the industry to share data more easily and exploit it more effectively.
The DST SC’s coverage includes systems, data and telematics that support the:
planning of train services
activities during the on-the-day running of train services
activities after the day of operation.
These activities include areas such as:
timetable, rolling stock and train crew planning
resource management
train regulation and traffic management
disruption and incident management
customer and passenger information systems.
The committee also has responsibility for managing the change control process for the Telematic Applications for Freight (TAF) and the Telematic Applications for Passenger Services (TAP) National Technical Specification Notices (NTSNs).
During 2023, the committee focused on establishing a pipeline of priority areas for data standardisation, building on workshops held with committee members during late 2022. A high-level prioritisation methodology was developed and agreed with the committee, then applied to a range of candidate areas that the group had identified.
This resulted in three priority areas being confirmed:
the standardisation of time between systems
unique train service identification
the integration between traffic management (TM) and stock and crew (S&C) systems.
Time was identified as a priority area because of the importance of standardising a common, reference time, so that operational and technical systems can reliably exchange, aggregate and compare data.
Establishing a common approach to how systems and operational staff identify a particular train service as unique is important to address the limitations of current train headcode system. Bespoke IDs are used within other systems and multiple IDs need to be published for the same service and have varying durations of uniqueness.
For both of these areas, a strong plan for the way forward has been established and initiated, and they are likely to result in the first two Railway Industry Standards that the committee will publish.
Standardisation of the cross-organisational interfaces between TM and S&C systems is complex but would support compatibility between different systems and provide transparency and explanation of schemas, processes, data fields.
Work is ongoing to determine the most appropriate scope and content of an associated standards proposal, and this work will continue into 2024.
The report of research project (T1298), which documents the development and application of the prioritisation approach that led to the identification of the above three areas, has been published on RSSB’s research catalogue.
Standards are sometimes misunderstood as a source of unnecessary cost and bureaucracy, when in fact, when applied correctly, they do the exact opposite, save money and effort. RSSB manages the rail industry’s approach to cross-industry standards. We bring industry together to address challenges, use research, data, analysis and operational experience to inform good practice or best practice, and then codify this good practice into a form that everyone can pick up and benefit from, saving them time, money and effort.
The key is to allow industry to own the process without any vested interests dominating the discussion. The outcome is a trusted, efficient and effective process.
Greater value could be derived from data if improvements occurred in the areas of data availability (particularly in a digital format); sharing and openness of data; and data format and standardisation. Together, these three aspects form the basis of data interoperability. These three aspects are key to making enabling data and systems to be joined together, leading to greater system efficiency.
Membership of standards committees follows a fairly formal process, and currently all of the committee seats are full, with the exception of the Infrastructure Contractor community, where there is a vacancy. But there are other ways to support the committee, including taking part in the consultation process for its standards, the first two of which will be sent out for consultation in 2024. You can sign up for standards consultations on RSSB’s website. Similarly, anyone can make a request for help if they see a need for the creation of a new standard within the scope of the group. This can also be done through the RSSB website.
Want to know more?Visit the Data, Systems and Telematics Standards Committee webpage for more information.
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