formatting standard for traffic advisories

[Jennifer Bell]

Hi there,

I was just browsing through the Vancouver data site, and I noticed the
RSS feed for traffic advisories. While the RSS feeds are great, it
got me thinking how much better it could be if the announcements were
more structured -- and somehow included geospatial coordinates so that
they could be mapped.

Is this on the roadmap? Has anyone looked into established formats
for doing this? sunlight labs, civicdb, or the Open Planning Project
might be good places to check.

Jennifer Bell
http://visiblegovernment.ca

[Matt Laird]

I'm not sure what exists in the sphere of real time geospatial data
formats, but you might also want to look at what Google is doing in
the GTFS format.

I know this is not transit data, but I do remember seeing something on
the Google Transit Developers mailing list a few months ago about a
specification they were developing for real time transit location
feeds. It'd be really cool if the formats were somehow compatible and
have a super-set for representing any moving object on the surface of
Earth. Less parsers to write in the future. :)

[Mark, Jonathan]

Many of the folks on this list are interested in mapping and GIS topics so I wanted you to be aware of an upcoming one-day seminar being put on by URISA BC (the BC chapter of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association).  The seminar is October 29 at the Hilton Hotel at Metrotown in Burnaby and will have 10 presentations that may be of interest to you.  Complete information and registration details are on the URISA BC site at http://urisabc.org/gis_changing_event.html.  The registration fee of $90 includes continental breakfast, coffee and lunch in addition to the full day of presentations.

Thanks.

Jonathan

Jonathan Mark, GIS Manager
IT Department
Financial Services Group
City of Vancouver
604-873-7987 phone
604-873-7875 fax
http://vancouver.ca/vanmap
http://vancouver.ca/data

[Audrey Foo]

There is also opensearch, it can provide geo coordinates.

It was developed by Amazon and has been around for awhile, and is actually made available by quite a few sites.

http://raincityguide.com/2009/02/16/opensearch-is-beyond-cool-–-it’s-the-new-cold/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch

I worked on the opensearch module for drupal, and though the concept may seem abstract, it is not much more than a glorified rss feed, that hooks into your search system, so that an external viewer could request a feed on a certain topic, etc.

Thanks

Audrey

[Meng]

The GeoRSS feed with a filtering capability is what you just
described. There will be a new Road Ahead GeoRSS feed that can be read/
viewed by a feed reader or by Google Maps. This will be soon available
from the OpenData website.

On Oct 14, 12:40 pm, Jennifer Bell <jenni...@visiblegovernment.ca>
wrote:

[Jennifer Bell]

Cool! Are you from the city? Can I quote you?

I think this would be the first such feed in Canada.

Jennifer Bell
http://visiblegovernment.ca

[David Eaves]

Meng - this is great news. Any update on this?

cheers,
Dave Eaves

[Meng]

What I can tell is that a test version of the Road Ahead GeoRSS feed
(xml file) and its refresh process has been created in dev. It would
be available in one month from the Open Data website. This Road Ahead
GeoRSS feed file can be downloaded, read by a feed reader as well as
viewed by Google Maps and Bing Map.

This is just my personal view and does not mean any final decision
made by the City.

Thanks

Meng Li

GIS Team
City of Vancouver

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[Meng]

A new GeoRSS feed for city's Road Ahead information is now available
from the Open Data website (RSS Feed) at http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/index.htm
as well as from city's new Road Ahead website (a soft launch today) at
http://vancouver.ca/roadahead_wa/.

The new Road Ahead RSS (http://gisweb2.vancouver.ca/georss/
roadahead_rss.xml) and GeoRSS (http://gisweb2.vancouver.ca/georss/
roadahead_georss.xml) feed files can be best viewed with IE 7 (or
higher) or any browser with a good feed reader.

The GeoRSS feed file can be best viewed on Google Maps via
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://gisweb2.vancouver.ca/georss/roadahead_georss.xml
as well as on Bing Map via
http://www.bing.com/maps/?mapurl=http://gisweb2.vancouver.ca/georss/roadahead_georss.xml.

The RSS and GeoRSS feed files (as well as the new Road Ahead map) are
updated hourly from 7am to 7pm Mon to Fri.

Please let us know your comments. Have a nice weekend!

Thanks

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