In this month’s Executive Corner, we chatted with RM3P
Executive Committee member Bob Osmond, VDOT’s Chief of Technology and Business Strategy. Read on for Bob’s observations and insights on the RM3P Data-Exchange Platform. The platform, with development now underway, will serve as the foundational component of RM3P, effectively tying the other RM3P program elements together.
RM3P: What is the Data-Exchange Platform (DEP)? What is its role in the RM3P initiative?
Bob Osmond (BO): In support of other program elements, the Data-Exchange Platform is the central component of RM3P that will house and supply data. It’s really the heart of the solution. It’s a cloud-based data storage and exchange system that serves to provide real-time and historical data on all kinds of multi-modal travel conditions.
The vision is to enable transportation data-sharing and information exchange across very disparate platforms, services, and regional partners. The relevant data, in addition to supporting RM3P components, will also provide data to third-party information providers.
RM3P: What types of data will be managed by the DEP? How will data in the DEP be made available to external systems?
BO: The data is multi-modal in nature. For instance, it includes transportation incident data that feeds into the Decision Support System and helps us calculate the incentives we will offer the public. It also includes data that feeds into the Commuter Parking Information System, like the capacity of commuter parking lots and the current availability of parking. The DEP will fuse this data and make it available through industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs) so that other systems can consume the data. By providing all of this data together in a single service, we hope industry partners will be able to work much more efficiently.
RM3P: The DEP is building on the existing Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS), operated by the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Transportation Technology (CATT) Lab. What were some of the reasons for using RITIS as the core foundation for the DEP?
BO: The team conducted an extensive survey of available products and solutions that could be used. We looked at options ranging from developing [the DEP] as a custom in-house solution build, to leveraging third-party platforms that are commercially available. RITIS has been a partner of VDOT’s for many, many years. As we looked at the opportunity to leverage RITIS as a potential solution, we found that the benefits far outweigh any potential risks: They have existing data and APIs that RM3P needs, they’re used to working with multi-modal data, and they already support a large number of the data types that we’re expecting to use. There are many states already using [RITIS], including Virginia, so it’s designed for scalability and expandability. When we looked at all these features, not to mention the time savings and the cost savings, it was really a no-brainer for us to go in this direction. [To learn more about RITIS and the DEP, see this month’s article on the DEP.]
RM3P: How long will it be before the DEP is operational? What key milestones should be expected during the deployment period?
BO: The DEP is expected to be fully developed and operational by the end of 2022. That’s pretty soon—it’s a fast-moving project. However, it’s designed to roll out in increments. We have six development cycles, or “Epics.” Each Epic is approximately three months in duration, and [the Epics are] focused on developing the specific needs we have for the various data feeds. We think there will be value gained after every Epic. We’re expecting a significant number of DEP enhancements to be available by the end of Epic 3, which is the spring of 2022.
RM3P: What is your vision about how the DEP in particular – and RM3P generally – will function and perform over time? How will regional transportation agencies benefit? What improvements can commuters expect in their transportation experiences?
BO: It is hard to take datasets that are produced for different solutions and pull that data together in some type of meaningful format that can be used to do real-time analysis. That makes me so excited about the DEP. As things are happening in real time, the data is going to be generated, captured, and made available for much more coordinated responses among localities, regions, and state agencies, all to tackle the problems that happen on a day-to-day basis. And because we’re all going to be working from the same dataset, we’re going to have a single idea of what’s going on, instead of having some systems reporting one situation and others possibly reporting something else.
I think this will drive more collaborative planning among different transportation planners across the region. I see the DEP forming an anchor that can be used to support a potential large, robust ecosystem in the region. Ultimately, our objective is to empower commuters by providing them with the sufficient knowledge and information to engage in intelligent decision-making.