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NEWSletter
Editorial
Issue 1 - May 2014 In this Issue: 1 Editorial 2
In the Spotlight: About FOT-Net Data Data Sharing Network The FOT Network FOT-Net Wiki The Consortium
3 WP Updates Networking FOT-Net Data Sharing Framework Data Catalogue and Tools FOT Methodology Updates Announcement of Webinars 4 Stakeholder workshops FOT-Net Data workshop: Helsinki FOT-Net Data workshop & paper presentation at ITS World Congress, Detroit 5 News from other projects Accident Data SHRP2 data 6 News Upcoming events Contact Us News service News about your FOT Additional info
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 610453.
Quoting Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, “In a networked age, we all depend on data, and opening it up is the best way to realise its value, to maximise its potential”, I can only confirm that the EC strongly supports open data and re-use. With the EC emphasising this support under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, where “open” public documents will become the default; FOT-Net Data is a vital step in the process towards a Europe of open data and re-use. Open data and re-use guarantee the best value for public money: collecting data is very costly, sharing and re-using data will deliver new services and applications and facilitate correlation between research results. It will also ensure accountancy and transparency of co-finance, and lead to informed policy decisions. Products and services built on open data must rely on the long term sustainability of the open data approach, which needs to be embedded into governments’ strategies. Cross border and cross domain harmonisation and interoperability are key success factors to build a truly connected open data ecosystem. The data collected by Field Operational Tests (FOTs) and Pilots has a significant potential for re-use. FOT-Net Data will develop a data sharing framework, a framework to describe available datasets, deliver recommendations for data protection, strategies to facilitate data sharing, and raise awareness about the value of data sharing. The project will continue building the FOT community, further revise and promote the FESTA methodology for FOTs and data sharing, and enhance international cooperation. Building on the rich heritage of its predecessor FOT-Net 2, I am confident that FOT-Net Data will rise to the challenge and will represent a significant milestone towards a Europe of open research data. Myriam Coulon-Cantuer, FOT-Net Data Project Officer, EC DG CONNECT Smart Cities and Sustainability
In the spotlight: About FOT-Net Data FOT-Net Data, Field Operational Test Networking and Data Sharing Support, is a 3-year support action project to • Support the efficient sharing and re-use of available Field Operational Tests (FOTs) datasets; • Develop and promote a framework for data sharing and data re-use; • Build a detailed catalogue of available data and tools; and • Operate an international networking platform for FOT activities. The FOT-Net Data project keeps the momentum of the FOT network and delivers new perspectives with regard to the sharing and re-usage of globally available FOT/Naturalistic Driving Studies (NDS) datasets.
FOT-Net Support:
Networking Platform Data Sharing Framework Catalogue of Data and tools FESTA Methodology
The sharing of valuable datasets will yield further research results, create new collaborative options, generate financial and time savings in transport research, support education at high levels and contribute to the market introduction of improved vehicle ICT. The FOT-Net Data project will update and promote the FESTA methodology, will maintain the FOT Wiki and will reach an agreement on the adoption of data sharing principles.
Data Sharing Framework The framework addresses legal topics such as user consent forms, participants’ privacy and topics to include in data sharing agreements. It also addresses documentation of key information from FOT execution and collected datasets, ensuring that the datasets can be reused. The framework provides guidance on financial aspects such as data release costs and arranging support for new analysts.
The FOT Network FOT-Net Data maintains and increases the momentum achieved in FOT-Net. The FOT Network, experts and stakeholders gather in European concertation meetings, international meetings, workshops and webinars. They will collaborate in newsletters, the FOT Wiki, the FOT website and LinkedIn.
FOT-Net Wiki: A tool for and by the FOT Community The FOT Wiki is a free living encyclopaedia of FOTs that anyone can edit. The FOT catalogue – set up as a wiki tool maintained by the FOT community – serves as a reference for all FOT organisers. The FOT Wiki is a growing source of information on FOT projects in Europe and across the world.
Visit http://wiki.fot-net.eu
In the near future it will include a catalogue and description of available datasets. FOT-Net Data will work with data owners to make more data available. The FOT-Net Wiki can be accessed freely by the FOT network. All experts are invited to share their FOT knowledge by contributing to the Wiki.
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The Consortium The consortium includes 8 project partners: CEESAR, Chalmers University, CTAG, Daimler, ERTICO-ITS Europe, IKA, University of Leeds and project coordinator VTT. Besides the consortium, relevant experts and stakeholders from all around the world can join the FOT-Net Data project as an Associated Partner and actively contribute to the networking. Associated Partners are required to sign a letter of intent, specifying their contribution to the project.
WP Updates: Networking
Report on Amsterdam meetings: FOT-Net 2 and FOT-Net Data FOT-Net 2 Final Event, Amsterdam, 18 March 2014 FOT-Net 2 presents its rich legacy to the FOT community during its final event
Around 60 participants of the FOT-Community gathered in the iconic Eye building in Amsterdam on 18 March 2014 to formally close the FOT-Net 2 project. FOT-Net 2 was really the “one-stop shop” for FOTs: it created an information exchange platform on FOTs, linked national, European and international cooperation with contributions of FOT experts from Europe, Asia Pacific and USA. Via round tables and plenary sessions, participants advanced major FOT topics such as cooperative system, NDS, data sharing, deployment, and data and impact analysis. The project revised and promoted the FESTA handbook. In order to transfer the knowledge developed in the FESTA project and enhance the methodology, six seminars were organised during the course of the project and relevant material was captured and fed into the FESTA revision. An important legacy of FOT-Net is the FOT-Net Wiki that has become an established information and reference tool for the FOT community. The FOT-Net project also performed an analysis on how previous FOTs have met stakeholders’ needs. While the analysis shows a rather positive picture of FOTs and the use of the results, it also underlines the need for the deployment of FOT results. The need for collaboration and business cases gains importance. First FOT-Net Data workshop, Amsterdam, 19 March 2014 FOT-Net Data: a vital step towards a Europe of open data and re-use The first FOT-Net Data workshop focused on the benefits of re-using data from other FOTs, the need to remove obstacles for opening datasets to other researchers and to make data sharing profitable for both data owners and future data users. Associated Partners to the project ranging from public authorities, information brokers to research organisations, explained their expectations: through networking they will be able to share competences and results and potentially develop joint activities and projects. The benefits of data sharing relate to the improved source for research and decision making; the obstacles of data sharing primarily point to the legal ownership and data quality. continued over page... 3.
Dale Thompson of the USA Department of Transport presented the data sharing and re-use initiatives currently undertaken in the USA. Data owners testified on how for example they can share data with research partners and the challenges this sharing may entail regarding copyrights, personal integrity laws, sharing agreements and storage of data. Research institutions explained that FOT data cover all kinds of realities and that not all datasets are equal. Some may be too specialised to use. The FOT-Net Data project will develop a data sharing framework for use in global data sharing. It will develop procedures and templates for data sharing to enable data to be used, create a frame for description of FOT/NDS data types and meta-data and identify minimum dataset to be collected and develop recommendations for data protection depending on data type. The project will look into data and tools for data sharing. It will collect FOT data tools for data enrichment phases and data analysis, tools used in certain FOTs and it will build on tool collection from the FOT-Net Wiki. The findings will result in FESTA updates e.g. regarding common post-processing steps, types of data aggregation and data exchange formats.
FOT-Net Data Sharing Framework During the last decade, large quantities of FOT/NDS data have been collected globally. The data is used in the original project. This vast data resource could be utilised to answer many new research questions. The purpose of the FOT Data Sharing Framework is to facilitate this re-use of data. It spans from the pre-requisites to be decided upon in the original project, such as ownership, access and usage rights, to the support to be given to those re-using the data. A draft of a common data sharing platform based on the procedures used so far was produced in FOT-Net 2 Working Group Data sharing; http://www.fot-net.eu/en/ networking/working_groups/data_sharing.htm. In this report, the data sharing topic was divided into seven different topics; 1. Data sharing in project documents, 2. Valid data, 3. Data protection, 4. Education, 5. Support and research services, 6. Financial models and 7. Application procedure. The FOT Data Sharing Framework will further develop this concept to take into account the context of global data sharing. During this first year, focus will be on collecting the views of the different stakeholders and also on evaluating procedures and models already used for data sharing in research areas with real world data. The first action will be taken at the ITS European Congress in Helsinki, Finland, where stakeholders will be invited to give their views on the content of a sustainable global data sharing framework.
Data Catalogue and Tools Several FOTs and NDSs have already been successfully conducted during the past years. Large amount of data in the form of different datasets have been collected by means of different recording methods and tools. Depending on specific needs tools were selected or even specifically developed in order to meet the necessary requirements. FOT-Net Data will identify available datasets, create a FOT Data Catalogue and provide information on available tools. The data catalogue will be in accordance with the data sharing framework. Data providers will be invited to contribute to the data catalogue by describing their FOTs and datasets in a harmonised format.
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A large set of data tools is already available from previous FOT-Net activities. The FOTNet tool inventory was created and clusters all collected tools into different segments depending on the necessity for usage and in close relation to the main steps defined in the FESTA handbook (tools for preparing, tools for using and tools for analysing). The inventory lists available tools and specifies these tools as far as the tool specification are accessible and public. The focus of FOT-Net Data is on tools for data post processing and data sharing. Issues of data exchange formats and data aggregation are essential core topics during the tool collection and analysis. The tool inventory is available to the public in the FOT Wiki. Please visit us at: http://wiki.fot-net.eu/index.php?title=Tools_for_FOTs.
FOT Methodology Updates FOTs have proven to be highly valuable and have been identified as an evaluation method for driver support systems with the aim of proving that such systems can deliver realworld benefits. The FOT methodology (as described in the FESTA handbook) provides comprehensive guidance to facilitate the successful delivery of such experiments. The original FESTA handbook and a revised version were produced in the FESTA project. Version 3 was created by a working group in the FOT-Net 2 Support Action based on the results of seminars organised in the previous FOT-Net project and feedback from users of the methodology. Version 4 took into account the feedback received after the publication of Version 3 for Open Consultation in the period July-August 2011 and during a presentation workshop in Gothenburg on 08/09/2011. The state-of-the-art Version 5 is the result of the activity of five Working Groups in FOT-Net 2 during 2012 and 2013. The findings of the Working Groups enhance the FOT methodology in the following areas, namely “Data Analysis”, “Events and Incident Definition”, “Legal and Ethical Issues”, “Impact Assessment and Scaling Up”, and “Data Sharing”. A final workshop organised in Turin (4-5/11/2013) gathered further feedback from the FOT-Net 2 consortium, associated project partners and FOT experts to review and validate the amendments to be made to the handbook http://wiki.fot-net.eu/index.php?title=FESTA_handbook.
Announcement of Webinars It is important that the knowledge and experiences captured in the FESTA handbook are transferred to the FOT community in a way that makes them available on-line. It is also important that the new knowledge and lessons learned from the current FOTs and NDSs are taken into account in the revision of the FOT methodology. To facilitate these activities, the FOT-Net Data project will organise six webinars between August 2014 and April 2016 that are especially designed for participants who are (relatively) new to FOTs and NDS or who want to become familiar with the methodology. Each webinar will target a part of the FOT-methodology including “research questions and hypotheses”, “performance indicators”, “ethical and legal issues”, “data bases, data analysis and hypotheses testing”, “impact assessment”, and “data sharing and data reuse”. The materials and presentations used in the webinars will be analysed and selected to create stand-alone e-learning modules that can be used for self-study. The modules may take different forms, including tutorials, multiple choice questionnaires, short video clips. The modules will be put on-line on the project’s website. The announcement of webinars will be available at www.fot-net.eu.
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Stakeholder workshops FOT-Net Data workshop during ITS European Congress in Helsinki The 10th European ITS Congress will take place in Helsinki, Finland, from 16 to 19 June 2014. During the Helsinki Congress, the FOT-Net Data project will organise a Stakeholder workshop entitled “Do not large datasets go to waste!”. The workshop will take place at Messukeskus, Expo and Convention Centre Helsinki on Tuesday 17 June 2014 from 14:00 to 15:30. In FOTs, huge amounts of data are gathered about the interaction between ITS and drivers, vehicles and infrastructure. Not all data are analysed in the projects that have collected it. Re-using the data for further analyses or to answer new research questions or as test data for apps would be ideal. The workshop will take a closer look at the data available from large European FOTs and address the question how we can benefit from the data. A closer look will be taken at the euroFOT (ADAS FOT) and DRIVE C2X (cooperative-systems FOT) projects, giving an overview of types of data collected and their deployment. Also SHRP2 (US Naturalistic Driving Study) data will be discussed; these are being analysed by third parties. UDRIVE, the European naturalistic driving study, still has to start data-collection but is already preparing for data-use by others. FOT-Net Data will explain its role in facilitating data sharing in Europe. Next to short presentations from these projects, an interactive exercise will be made between the panel and the audience, together finding ideas on how some example datasets can be used to answer impact questions on safe, efficient and sustainable transport.
FOT-Net Data workshop and technical paper presentation at ITS World Congress in Detroit The FOT-Net Data project will organise a workshop and present a technical paper at the ITS World Congress in Detroit to be held from 7 to 11 September 2014. The FOT-Net Data international workshop will take place on 9 September 2014. It will focus on exchange of information on FOTs and data sharing between the three regions (Europe, USA and Asia-Pacific region), discuss problems and solutions for data sharing, and provide recommendations for the Data sharing platform. The technical paper called “A platform for sharing data from field operational tests” will be presented. The paper describes how a platform is being developed for sharing data collected in FOTs. In these tests often a huge amount of data is gathered about driver behaviour and the interaction between drivers, vehicles, ITS, infrastructure and the traffic environment. These datasets are often only partly analysed, because of targeted research goals and lack of resources. They may be of great value for other organisations and researchers in order to answer further research questions and to determine the impact of wide-scale use of ITS. The paper will describe a how a European platform for enabling data sharing and data re-use is being developed.
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News from other projects Accident Data When sharing FOT data, one can learn from similar fields and best practise gained from activities in related areas. While there are projects that generate and share accident data since a long time, sharing of accident data in a bigger context and on a more global level has become an issue only lately, both on a legal / organisational and on a technical level. The “initiative for the global harmonisation of accident data� (iGLAD) is preparing a first data set of homogenous accident data from 10 different countries, which is expected for May 2014. This project has a close connection to FOT-Net Data and using various documents, agreements and technical methods as a blueprint can help forming methodological principles of data sharing in FOT-Net Data. Also, further steps in iGLAD this year will be watched by FOT-Net Data when more countries will join the iGLAD project and a self-hosting organisation structure will be introduced. This provides input on working business models when it comes to establishing a cross-country platform of data exchange in FOT-Net Data. Obviously, the big issues of data sharing on a European level have to be handled in the context of different legal conditions within Europe, especially when it comes to data protection and privacy. SHRP2 data The US project SHRP2 just recently finished collecting the world´s largest NDS dataset. The data was collected from 2000 cars and over 3000 drivers and stored in a central data center. The magnitude of this operation called for rigorous procedures. This also applies to the handling of the data for project analysis. Early on in the project, a Data Access Expert Task Group (ETG) was created, to deal with the issues of data handling. The work of this ETG formed a framework for a set of documents stating the data handling requirements, including the consent form, the requirements on the organisations handling the data and the agreement to be signed with the research organisation getting access to the data. The three analysis projects that are funded within the SHRP2 project are to be finalised by 1st July, 2014. The data for analysis in the projects are extracted by the data center, after in-depth discussions based on the data specifications from the specific research organisations and signed data agreements. The video and GPS are only accessible at the central data center. Discussions are on-going, how to make the data accessible after the end of the SHRP2 project in 2015. A first important step was taken by the decision to fund the availability of the data for the next five years. The storage, access structure and application procedures are yet to be decided.
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News Upcoming events • 10th European ITS Conference “ITS in your pocket – proven solutions driving user services” Helsinki, Finland, June 16 – 19, 2014 The FOT-Net Data project will organise a Stakeholder Workshop SW02 “Do not let large datasets go to waste” at the Messukeskus, Expo and Convention Centre Helsinki on Tuesday 17 June 2014, 14:00-15:30
• Ninth SHRP 2 Safety Symposium Washington, July 10, 2014 • DRIVE C2X final event Berlin, July 16 – 17, 2014 • Fourth International Symposium on Naturalistic Driving Research Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, August 25 – 28, 2014 • 21st ITS World Congress “Transportation for Tomorrow” Detroit, USA, September 7 – 11, 2014
The FOT-Net Data at the Detroit World Congress:
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FOT-Net Data International Workshop on 9 September 2014 This workshop will be jointly organised with the US Department of transport (DoT) Research Data Exchange (rde) programme. FOT-Net Data Technical paper presentation “A platform for sharing data from field operational tests”
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News about your FOT Please send your information on FOT-projects to info@fot-net.eu
Contact us
Project Coordinator:
Sami Koskinen, VTT sami.koskinen@vtt.fi
All info is available on www.fot-net.eu
The sole responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Communities. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 610453.
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