TomTom Traffic Incidents – Intermediate Service – DATEX II

The TomTom Traffic Incidents - Intermediate Service – DATEX II (hereafter called ‘Service’) is based on DATEX II v1.0. DATEX II is a standard for information exchange between traffic control centers, service providers, and application developers.

The Service responds with the latest real-time information about traffic incidents, including their causes and impacts. Typical traffic incidents include accidents, road construction projects, traffic jams, travel weather warnings, road closures, or any road-related situation that could potentially cause a delay.

In this document, we discuss how to access the service and the features that are included.

This page gives basic information on the Service and shows how to configure this to work with your environment. The fields are described in two sets of tables. One that defines them in a logical way, and the other describes in detail how they are represented in DATEX II format. Basic knowledge of installing and using XML-based schemas is necessary.

This information is intended to be used by TomTom partners and customers (decision makers and developers).

TomTom offers traffic incident data to customers. The basic configuration offers customers information on traffic congestion and other roadwork related traffic events.

Each traffic incident is represented in a DATEX II event, and we add an AlertC code with the same meaning. This AlertC code allows the user to customize the content, as they see fit. This information is configured in country-based datasets. Since the product is static, included regions and features are fixed once the product is configured.

Detailed information about the physical representation in DATEX II can be found below in Standard information.

The Service gives users traffic incident data with highly customizable configuration options, in addition to the standard configuration.

Detailed information about the physical representation in DATEX II can be found below in Optional information.

The Service uses RESTful API (Representation State Transfer) technology. Because you only need to use one URL, the service is simple to use.

If you make the following request:

You can expect the following response:

The payload in the output is formatted as DATEX II, which is a European standard for the exchange of Traffic and Travel Information. TomTom supports version 1. The DATEX II User Guide version 1.0 and the standard DATEX II XML schema version 1.0 are available from the DATEX II website (www.datex2.eu). Recommended documents are:

The Elaborated Data Publication, used by TomTom, is described in more detail in section 4.11 of the DATEX II User Guide version 1.0.

TomTom extended the data model with additional fields; the full XSD schema including extensions can be downloaded by clicking this link. It is a "Level B" extension of the standard XML schema: DATEXIISchema_1_0_1_0.xsd. Such an extension is interoperable with the "Level A" data model (see section 2.2.3 in the DATEX II User Guide version 1.0 for more information).

The DATEX II data model has been extended to allow additional parameters. Some of these extensions are needed for the standard feed information (see also Standard configurations).

The traffic information is provided as a SituationPublication. A SituationPublication contains a snapshot of the latest traffic data. No delta mechanism is supported, so incremental updates are not included. A SituationPublication can contain several different situations.

A situation represents a traffic or travel incident comprising one or more traffic or travel circumstances. These are linked by one or more causal relationships and apply to related locations. Each traffic or travel circumstance is represented by a SituationRecord.

A SituationRecord is one element of a situation. It is characterized by values at a given time, defining one version of this element. When these values change, a new version is created. One SituationRecord can be:

and can contain:

Each Situation has a unique identifier. Additionally, every SituationRecord also has a unique identifier. This identifier is established when the Situation or SituationRecord is first created in the DATEX II system database. As long as the situation exists, this identifier will always be present within the system. The unique identifier has a fixed prefix "TT", followed by a string. No further assumptions can be made on the contents of the identifier.

The identifier is unique across all supported countries.

A SituationRecord has a validity period comprised of:

If the current delay is available for a SituationRecord, the delayTimeValue is provided in the Impact. If there is information about closed lanes, because of an accident or other incident, it can be populated in ImpactDetails.

In some cases there are multiple SituationRecords that are related to each other. For instance, there can be a traffic jam caused by an accident. If the locations of these SituationRecords overlap or are connected AND they have the same direction, the SituationRecords are contained in the same Situation. In that case a single Situation contains more than one SituationRecord.

It is also possible that two SituationRecords are related to each other, but do not overlap. For instance, one SituationRecord contains a diversion advice, located at a highway intersection. This is because the road is blocked farther along the segment, that is described in a different SituationRecord. In that case, the SituationPublication does not contain a reference from one SituationRecord to the other.

For the first example, consider combining the information from the SituationRecords in your end application to let the end-user know there is a delay due to an accident. In the second example, there is a diversion due to a road closure.

A SituationRecord may contain language-specific text. For example, this can be a diversion advice, provided by the network manager, or some other free text. Typically, this text is available only in the language of the country.

The information is reported as a (list of) generalPublicComment element(s).

Example

<situationRecord [...] xsi:type="NetworkManagement" [...]>
    [...]
    <generalPublicComment>
        <comment>
            <value lang="DE">Wegen Reparaturarbeiten sind auf der Münchener Straße in Fahrtrichtung Benrath wechselseitig jeweils ein Fahrstreifen und der Standstreifen gesperrt.</value>
        </comment>
    </generalPublicComment>
    [...]
</situationRecord>

Every SituationRecord contains a GroupOfLocations, that describes the involved location. The Location is defined in section 4.16 of the DATEX II User Guide.