Marcus asked that I pass this around. Please circulate to anyone you think may be interested. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: TRB Urban Metadata Subcommittee: Agenda items TRB2003 Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:47:10 +1100 From: Marcus Wigan <oxsys(a)optusnet.com.au> Dear Subcommittee Members and Friends We have been allocated 12noon-slot on tuesday for the metadata subcommittee meeting, in a room at the Hilton that is as yet undetermined. BRIEF the developments reported at the last meeting have progressed, but slowly. Adoption of metadata vocabularies and standards has not moved very far as yet, but several major surveys have begun to determine metadata specifications, and in particular the NESSTAR project at the Uk SSDA (Social Science data Archive) described last year, has been involved in an initial XML/DTD/ Nesstar demonstration related to transport. The Scottish executive adopted a NESSTAR access for the Scottish Household Survey (which has only a limited transport coverage) late last year. papers by Wigan, Hine and Grieco(presented at TRB2002 due out right now in TRR) and bu Axhausen and Wigan (presented at Survey conference in 2002, book du out in a couple of months) will shortly be published. The related issues of data interworking have begun to be taken up by a 5000 series committee on information systems, and the library committee has also begun to focus on these areas. In view of the slow takeup, a session was not promoted for 203 meeting, after two, one in 2001 and one in 2002, and planning for 2004 is a prime agenda item for 2003 subcommittee meeting. To this end I would appreciate input from the subcommittee and friends on their encounters with metadata developments, and work that they area aware of that may or may not yet have reached publication. It is now timely to formulate a series of problem statements on metadata needs and research actions, which we could then coordinate with the Library and Information systems committee perspectives, as it is now timely to focus of the work that needs to be done now that awareness of the concepts has reached a reasonable level. For those likely to be in Europe in August 2003, the IATBR meeting in Lucerne, organised by Kay Axhausen at ETH, has a full week long working stream for the development discussion and comparsion and hopefully agreement of XML/DTDs for transport and related items and survey usage. This will be chaired by M R Wigan. this meeting will be an excellent working platform to bring together different developing approaches, and I strongly urge all of you to bring this opportunity to the attention of interested parties. I am proposing that the Subcommittee plan a meeting at the European Transport Conference to be held in Strasbourg 8-10 October 2003, as this is becoming the TRB equivalent for the EU, and will be an excellent forum to bring in developments in several EU projects of interest to our subcommittee. These include the GTF initiative, and other outcomes of the SPOTLIGHTS and BRIDGES programs and their emergent successors. 1. Please indicate if you are likely to be able to TRB Jan 2003 [ ] TRB subcommittee meeting jan 2003 [ ] IATBR 2003 Lucerne Aug 2003 [ ] AET 2003 Strasbourg Oct 2003 [ ] 2. Please forward items for the Agedna. Suitable items include - updates on work and initiatives you are aware of - reports on work undertaken that you have been involved with - broad or specific problem statement indications (these will probably overlap with GIS and library areas at the first stage) I am requesting (see 'cc' fields) the relevant TRB Staff to pass this brief to the committee chairs of GIS and spatial information, Urban data and Information Systems (our parent committee, Chaired by Ed Christopher), the Information Systems Committee (Chaired by Jeff Western) and the Library committee for the reasons cited in the brief. Would the committee Chairs please circulate this brief to those on their committees who have an interest, and to the full Urban data committee members and friends list. I welcome input on the Agenda items, and form other committee chairs to make best use of the subcommittee meeting. For those who would like to discuss the subject but who cannot make the subcommittee meeting, I will in Washington from saturday night to thursday early pm and would be happy to make an arrangement to meet. Marcus Wigan Urban Data and Information Systems committee Subcommittee Chair, Urban Metadata ============================================================================== Dr Marcus Wigan, Working presently in : Australia * Principal Oxford Systematics, Box 126 Heidelberg 3084 Australia * Professor of Transport Systems, TRi Napier University Edinburgh Scotland * Hon Principal Research Fellow and A/Prof Dept Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Melbourne * Hon Senior Fellow, Dept Geography and Environmental Science, Faculty of Arts, Monash University Email:Base address oxsys(a)optusnet.com.au Website: http://go.to/mwigan Alternate email addresses usually redirected to base: m.wigan(a)napier.ac.uk mwigan(a)hotmail.com marcus.wigan(a)arts.monash.edu.au m.wigan(a)civenv.unimelb.edu.au Australia: Tel +61 39 459 9671 Fax + 61 39 459 8663 Mobile +61 410 489 029 UK: Tel +44 131 455 5140 Fax +44 131 5141 Mobile +44 788 0988 521 ==============================================================================