A SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE FOR ROMANSE

This article provides a brief description of the development of the system architecture for the ROad MANagement System for Europe (ROMANSE) project. ROMANSE has been in operation since 1992 and has achieved a fully integrated Traffic and Travel Information Centre (TTIC) for the city of Southampton and the surrounding area of the county of Hampshire in the United Kingdom. This provides real-time traffic and travel information through several media, traffic management, public transport operation monitoring, and support for trip planning. The creation of the functional and physical architectures for the ROMANSE system was carried out using the top-down approach. This involves starting from the system interfaces and then defining the system functions. The system interfaces provide links to the outside world represented through a series of terminators, each of which is given its own functional description. The functional descriptions define what each terminator is expected to do and enable the data that they provide and receive to be defined. To define its interface with the outside world, a total of 19 terminators were identified for the ROMANSE system. ROMANSE system functionality has been divided into 12 areas. These are then divided into 36 functions and 80 subfunctions. The physical architecture is defined by grouping together the functionality of the functional architecture. Through its system, the ROMANSE project provides one of the best examples of a TTIC in the United Kingdom. It includes a wide range of systems that are in the process of being expanded and refined in the light of current operational experiences.