The Transportation Object Platform--Intelligent Management of Multi Modal Network Data

Author: Otto Anker Nielsen
Organization: Technical University of Denmark, ScanRail Consult

Building 115
DK-2800
Lyngby, 64514
Denmark

Phone: 45-82-34-52-99
Fax: 45-45-93-64-12
onielsen@ivtb.dtu.dk

The Transportation Object Platform, TOP, is developed by ScanRail Consult to ease the mainte-nance and use of transportation network data, infrastructure data and planning data. This will provide a strong GIS-based solution for transport planning authorities, infrastructure owners, operators and their customers, as well as for application developers and consultants for such organizations.
TOP will be an open and extensible object model, created as an extension to the ArcInfo 8 Geoda-tabase. The COM components of TOP are custom behavior classes in the Geodatabase. This makes it possible to implement forced intelligent relations between objects in TOP. These relations apply to all applications, which are clients of the platform.
By using ArcMap to edit geographic and tabular objects, work processes are eased while the full topological complexity of any transport related model is retained. A suite of related tools will be provided for analysis, modeling and presentation purposes, such as:
 Editing, managing and maintaining complex multi-modal network data, stored in the Geoda-tabase. This includes physical networks, routes, stopping patterns, schedules, interchanges, ter-minals etc.
 Add-on visualization and editing tools for complex objects, such as terminals, routes and time-tables. An example is 3D visualizations of timetables.
 Tools for handling demand data, such as trip-matrices and freight delivery tables.
 Data management foundation for complex analysis applications, such as comprehensive multi-modal transport models, accessibility studies, timetable optimization & evaluation etc.
 Tools for displaying results of applications, e.g. bundles of routes or paths, which use a certain network segment, sheaves of routes between two locations, and transfer patterns in a terminal.
 Methods for managing hierarchical scenario-structures.