IVHS map database transfer standards: current status

As intelligent transportation systems, particularly navigation systems, achieve commercial deployment, the efficient and effective transfer of navigable map data is becoming an increasingly important issue. After several years of significant efforts in the area of transfer standards, a family of compatible standards is evolving which will serve national and international requirements well. The de facto international transfer standard for navigable map data is the Geographic Data File (GDF) developed by the Comite Europeen Normalisation (CEN, a pan-European standardization body). CEN GDF is currently under a period of extensive revisions and refinements in response to international requirements. There are also several national standards for map transfer, which are moving towards compatibility with the international version of GDF. It is anticipated that the International Standards Organization (ISO) version of GDF will form the foundation for a single international family of transfer standards for IVHS map data. The authors are active participants in national and international map database standards efforts, and recently moderated a workshop on developing an IVHS profile for the Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS). The workshop concluded that ISO GDF should be the basic structure for the IVHS profile for SDTS. This paper reports on the results of that workshop and discusses the current progress in ISO TC 204 on further refining GDF as the ISO standard for map database transfer.