META DATA SYSTEMS FOR THE TRANSPORT TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE

Rapidly emerging electronic communications technologies are supplying new sources of transport data as well as increasing the rate of change in transport supply and demand. Sufficiently comprehensive and up-to-date maintenance of datasets to serve all analysis needs is becoming difficult. Metadata, which can be defined as structured data about data sets, were designed to allow a more efficient use of data from different sources in different places at different times. This paper demonstrates that relevant data for the purpose of analysis may be sourced efficiently by maintaining and collecting metadata for transport analysis in a representation that allows interoperability (such as XML, RDF or Prolog) between systems and then using an appropriate search filter, such as spatial or temporal compatibility. Examples of how this may be done are provided using Prolog. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E206301.