WZDx Technical Assistance Subgroup Meeting Notes, 2020 04 06

Attendees

• AASHTO – Venkat Nallamothu
• Arizona DOT – Adam Carreon, David Haines
• Booz Allen Hamilton – Eric Ricciardi, Mahsa Ettefagh
• City of Austin – Luke Urie
• City of Las Vegas - Gena Kendall
• General Motors – David Craig
• HERE – Weimin Huang, Jingwei Xu
• IBI Group – Jacob Brady, Michelle Boucher
• ICF – Polly Okunieff, Rachel Ostroff
• iCone – Ross Sheckler
• INRIX – Jim Williams
• Iowa DOT – Sinclair Stolle
• Iowa State University – Skylar Knickerbocker
• ITE – Siva Narla
• KYTC – Drew Clark
• MapBox – Tom Lee
• Maryland DOT – Carole Delion
• MassDOT – Neil Boudreau
• Michigan DOT – Chris Brookes
• Minnesota DOT – Rashmi Brewer
• Missouri DOT – Dan Oesch
• Noblis – Kellen Shain
• PA Turnpike Commission – John Parker, Mike Davidson
• Panasonic – Lauren Cordova
• RITIS – Kali Fogel
• RTCSNC – Julia Uravich
• SharedStreets – Kevin Webb
• SWRI – Lynne Randolph
• Texas DOT – Jianming Ma
• TomTom – Rob Hoyler
• Trillium – Heidi Guenin, Aaron Antrim
• Uber ATG – Sammy Ghorbanian
• USDOT BTS – Derald Dudley
• USDOT FHWA – Deb Curtis
• USDOT ITS JPO – Ariel Gold
• USDOT OCIO – Amy Nelson
• USDOT Volpe Center – Wesley Alford, Mark Mockett
• Utah DOT – Chuck Felice
• Ver-Mac - Pier Castonguay
• Virginia DOT – David Rush
• Washington State DOT – Tom Stidham
• Woolpert – Qassim Abdullah
• Wyoming DOT – Charlie Bauer

Purpose and Intended Outcomes

• Formalize WZDx Technical Assistance Subgroup and introduce Co-Chairs
• Discuss subgroup charter, activities, and meeting cadence
• Clarify member roles and responsibilities, and outline next steps

Agenda

• Sign in and Welcome
• Co-Chairs Introduction
• WZDx Technical Assistance Subgroup Charter Review
• Discussion: Preferred Collaboration Environment
• Action Items and Next steps

Discussion Summary

Co-chair Introduction:

• Chuck Felice is a technology manager at the Utah Department of Transportation. His experience includes software development and GIS management at the UDOT Traffic Operations Center, and four years of experience on the connected vehicle team.
• Kevin Webb is a software developer with an interest in transportation data and experience in open government and with GTFS. SharedStreets builds on what he’s learned from the transit world and applying that to street information (regulation and activity). He’s been interested in road closure data and improving its usefulness for end users.

Charter

• Purpose: the Technical Assistance Subgroup will be the lead steward in identifying and prioritizing the technical assistance needs of WZDx data producers and users, and sharing best practices to assist in WZDx adoption
• Scope: the Technical Assistance Subgroup will primarily work in two areas:
  • Documenting early adopters, with the aim of making life easier for other WZDx adopters by capturing how one to three WZDx producers implemented the WZDx specification.
  • Cultivating a shared understanding between stakeholders, by moderating and participating in a forum for WZDWG members to share and prioritize frequently asked questions about implementing WZDx. The forum will be used to create a prioritized backlog for potential technical assistance activities in the future.
• Roles and Responsibilities:
  • USDOT provides meeting support and communication facilitation
  • Kevin and Chuck facilitate conversations within the Subgroup and any breakout groups from these meetings.
  • Subgroup members share expertise and experience in technical products and collaborate via forum

Preferred Collaboration Environment

• This subgroup will follow the practices being employed for the rest of the working group. GitHub, Google Docs, and teleconferences are useful for transparency and participation among the members of this subgroup.
  • Collaboration and ongoing communication will be necessary to ensure we capture the ideas and expertise of all members of the Subgroup

General Discussion

• Co-chairs have identified the low-hanging fruit of capturing the experiences of 1-3 early adopters.
• The collaboration space is intended to serve as a place to share experience between members and identify a backlog of future technical assistance
• Lynne Randolph: SwRI/TxDOT volunteer to be an early adopter, and have voiced that having a JSON schema would be a helpful technical assistance product.
• Skylar: Is one of the potential outputs of the working group best practices/guidelines for implementing?
  • Chuck: Yes, that’s something we want to be an outcome of the case studies. We want to identify commonalities from early adopters to build a best practice document. We can update that best guidance document as more people implement
• Pier Castonguay: Ver-Mac has a functional v2 feed based on private customer data that isn’t public yet. Could participate as an early adopter use case.
• Ariel Gold: There’s a critical role for data users in this area as well. Data users can use the technical assistance forum to identify their needs and to identify existing resources or repeatable solutions to make adoption work for everyone. The USDOT hopes that all WZDWG members, regardless of relationship to WZDx, can interact in this subgroup over the next few months.

Next steps and Action Items

• Keep an eye out for the next call on or around April 30
• Confirm participation in the Subgroup if you haven’t been added to the roster
• Subgroup co-chairs will identify and start interviews with v2 early adopters
• Subgroup members should add desired topics for technical assistance to a backlog to be addressed in the future and share examples of the possible document formats for best relaying technical assistance
• Co-chairs initiate development of best practices document based on topics that have already been identified
• Begin participating in technical assistance forum when it comes online