ISO/TR 21707:2008 specifies a set of standard terminology for defining the quality of data being exchanged between data suppliers and data consumers in the ITS domain. This applies to Traffic and Travel Information Services and Traffic Management and Control Systems, specifically where open interfaces exist between systems. It may of course be applicable for other types of interfaces, including internal interfaces, but this Technical Report is aimed solely at open interfaces between systems.

ISO/TR 21707:2008 identifies a set of parameters or meta-data such as accuracy, precision and timeliness etc. which can give a measure of the quality of the data exchanged and the overall service on an interface. Data quality is applicable to interfaces between any data supplier and data consumer, but is vitally important on open interfaces. It includes the quality of the service as a whole or any component part of the service that a supplying or publishing system can provide. For instance this may give a measure of the availability and reliability of the data service in terms of uptime against downtime and the responsiveness of the service or it may give a measure of the precision and accuracy of individual attributes in the published data.

It should be noted that in the context of ISO/TR 21707:2008 data may be taken to be either raw data as initially collected, or as processed data, both of which may be made available via an interface to data consumers. The data consumer may be internal or external to the organisation which is making the data available. Additionally the data may be derived from real time data (e.g. live traffic event data, traffic measurement data or live camera images) or may be static data which has been derived and validated off-line (e.g. a location table defining a network). Measurements of data quality are of importance in all such cases.

ISO/TR 21707:2008 is suitable for application to all open ITS interfaces in the Traffic and Travel Information Services domain and the Traffic Management and Control Systems domain.