BASIC INFORMATION (terms and definitions)

• ITS STANDARDIZATION PLAN: Czech Republic has been following the work of CEN/TC 278 since 1994, ISO/TC 204 since 2005. As the native language is not English, it was to decide which ITS standards are to be implemented into national standardization framework and what is the suitable form of their implementation – by translation or in English. The choice was to be done very carefully as the standards are many and the sources to implement little. In 2007 Technical standardization committee TNK 136 Road transport and traffic telematics (Czech mirror committee) has come up with a National plan specifying the implementation relevance of CEN and ISO ITS standards. The plan has resulted in several resolutions — ITS standards are many, of a big volume that could be hardly read, translation support is insufficient and some of them are not to be implemented at that time.
• STANDARD To raise national experts and relevant stakeholders awareness of the existence of the ITS standards and promote their content and use The Ministry of Transport had come up with the project STANDARD. The project S 316-520-2008 National plan for implementation of standards from the sector of ITS to praxis “STANDARD” (Ministry of Transport – TNK 136, 2008-2009) represents a knowledge system of information about ITS standards. 140 European and international normative documents, in vast majority not translated, within a volume of 8 000 pages in English have been transformed to the form of 4 to 5 page extracts in Czech language. The system enables the user to look up selected extracts of standards according to some criteria in five different ways – criteria of working group (WG), thematic criteria, criteria of structurally classified categories, criteria of key words and fulltext search. The extracts are compiled within so called User guidebook of 679 pages that represents the comprised information about treated ITS standards. In 2010 within STANDARD II project other 35 standards have been converted to extracts. The primer goal of the projects is to promote the existence of ITS standards and their intended use in real ITS systems implementations.
• EXTRACT: a document created by reduction of a standard to approximately 5 pages, made according to the methodology with respect to formal and content elements of the standard in such a way that it provides the users with adequate information about the scope of the standard and its application.
• Extract has become a new type of document exclusively created for raising awareness of existing ITS standard, but it is intended to be used for all sectors. To assure the consistency and unification of the form and content of the extracts a specific methodology for its creation has been worked out. Extract is a simplified text about a technical standard providing its reader of detailed information about the content of the standard. The aim of the extract is to deliver information about the intended use and application of the standard. The extract does not describe the scope of the standard, nor replaces the standard itself, its purpose is to provide the reader the possibility to make a good choice among the standards for his/her intention and guide him/her to buy and use the standard, simply said its purpose is the marketing of the standard.
• INFORMATION ABOUT STANDARD: information provided by national standardization body NNO (ÚNMZ) containing just the number, type of normative document, title, type of implementation to the Czech framework and the classification number within the system etc. The project STANDARD uses the information and adds more about it – the date of extract creation, the date and the stage of source document (standard), and the possible purpose of the standard.
• E-LEARNING: twenty of the most important ITS standards have been chosen to be worked out in the form of an e-learning course that is finished by a test of knowledge of a particular ITS standard. The single web page is in Czech only (see http://standard.eltodo.cz/).
• ITS STANDARD/EXTRACTS SEARCH: NNO provides users with formal information about implemented standards giving its number, classification, title and short description (abstract) specified within 1 to 2 paragraphs. The purpose of the project STANDARD is to provide a user with an on-line overview of ITS standards that are properly classified and make them be found by several search methods. The goal of the search is to find proper standards. The standards themselves are not available but the web application provides several results – degree of information – according to the importance of a standard.
• The web application registers all available CEN and ISO ITS standards. The results of the standards search provide at first the number and the list of standards being found; then the user chooses a particular standard to get more information about. All the standards are provided with basic information (similar to NNO information). 175 standards are provided with their extracts. These standards are also provided with the possibility to get in touch with the author (Question the author). 20 standards, the “most important of that time”, are provided with e-learning that is done by a particular web application.

BASIC FIELDS DESCRIPTION (headline and cards)

• FULLTEXT provides the search for a certain standard (group of standards/extracts) by identification of the standard (its number), part of its title or part of its extract´s text
• USERS are divided according to their particular interest about general or detailed information into four types: 1. a non specialist, 2.A manufacturer, test laboratory, 2B. Contractor/supplier, (all together as expert) 3. Investor/owner. For the type 1 non-specialist and for the type 3 investor/owner the search is done through single questions, for the type 2A, 2B expert the pre-defined key words are available.
• CATEGORIES represent a set of 48 thematic units of hierarchical structure that the standards/extracts are assigned to according to their contextual relevance. Each category contains ultimate number of standards/extracts that is specified in brackets. To reduce the number of found results the combination of two or more categories at once is possible to follow.
• WORKING GROUPS (WG) are productive teams of relevant technical committees that create thematically related set of standards. To search for standards/extracts by working groups is based on natural process of ITS standards creation.

HOW TO SEARCH (DETAILED GUIDANCE)

• SEARCH BY FULLTEXT: There are several searching methods. The simplest is the fulltext search. The other possibilities are: search by user, search by category and search by WG. The last choice is familiar to all involved in ITS standardization, the other two have been the results of the project STANDARD and are described as a particular matter.
• SEARCH BY USER One of the possible approaches to search for standards is based on the user view. In the project STANDARD three (of four) types of USER have been defined – a non specialist, expert and investor, see more by clicking on search by user.
• SEARCH BY CATEGORIES: The most complex and inventive search is the search by category. The reason for creation such a system of classification was the lack of horizontal view above the standards. The system started as a knowledge system and resulted in so-called “decision-making system”. The system is very complex, for more information click on Search by categories.
• The basic idea of the system was to find out knowledge units within the standards and develop an ontology of ITS through a systematic approach. After some discussion a suitable tool for such categorization has been chosen. It is a Square of opposition which is Aristotle´s tool within his system of logic that delimits several propositions by their logical relationship (polarity). The use of the tool prevents creators from possible repetitions or overlaying of the categories. The use of the tool has brought 48 different categories classified within three groups of 16 categories. Each of the group is described by “higher dipolarity” and each of their elements, “basic dipolarities”, is subdivided into four elements, (4 x 4 = 16). The three identified groups (higher dipolarities) are User and standard (formal categories), Transport and data (general categories) and Interface and communication (specific categories). For illustration the following table might help to fully understand. The table illustrates there are 12 squares of opposition specified as basic dipolarities.
• The square of opposition elements are defined by quality (positive or negative proposition) and quantity (particular or universal proposition). The table below shows the matrix of the system of categories.

• Every ITS standard has been classified into 48 categories (not all of them are relevant for a particular standard) and is searchable independently on its technical committee or working group. It gives the user the potential to find relevant CEN and ISO standards for a particular need. When ticking the chosen category the system shows the number of relevant results and generates a list of them. The list shows the number and title of the standard and its source (particular WG).
• The project describes and defines all the levels of polarities and their meaning for ITS standardization. The polarities are described within relevant squares of opposition to follow an element interrelation with the other three elements. It shows the way to classify a particular standard and gives an example of ISO 14816 classification, the same example as chosen for extract creation demonstration. All the standards (about 200) have been classified by those categories. The classification has been done by the authors of extracts, mainly by “national convenors”. To manage this every category had to be defined in a proper way to be unambiguously understood. Then the authors had been provided with some examples of classification to help them finish the task. Some categories could be considered as non relevant for ITS today, but the square of opposition is a universal tool and so it applies for the description of whole of the ITS systems (world) and it is not bound to existing state-of-art, but it can tackle even the future problems and development. Such classification helps even a “non-specialist” to orientate in a better way.
• SEARCH BY WORKING GROUPS (WG): this type of search is familiar to all who are involved in ITS standardization. It is based on classification of CEN/TC 278 and ISO/TC 204 working groups who create particular ITS standards.

FUTURE VISION

The system needs to develop, both in a quantitative manner – reflection of new standards and also ETSI involvement and in a qualitative manner – developing remaining four squares of opposition (16 polarities) to describe the ITS reality by 64 categories (complete square...). An analysis of future needs have been made, based on comparison with knowledge system in medicine. “User of standards” (patient) is subject to “asking for standards” (health investigation) and receives “standards packages” (diagnosis) to choose “a particular standard/ extract” (cure). This simple comparison underlines the real need to create “market packages of standards” for a particular ITS domain. Such a package should be accompanied by introductory comment (context). The web application could represent a universal marketing tool in the form of a web portal for all ITS standards.