GEWI Attends OpenLR Conference

A very important factor in operating a traffic and travel service is the ability to ensure that the original location reference will result in the same location on a receiving device or system, even when a different location referencing method or map is used.

For example, if a location is encoded by a service provider using one map maker’s digital map data, but the receiving device or system uses a different map, then the location data is unlikely to be correctly understood.

A solution to this problem is to use the license-free standard called OpenLR™ (LR stands for location reference) as a kind of translator or converter between two different maps.

OpenLR™ is developed by TomTom as a method to encode, transmit and decode location data, irrespective of the digital road network used.

Recently, a group of organizations from the navigation, automotive, device and location based services (LBS) industries met in Bergisch Gladbach, near Cologne Germany to discuss issues related to the OpenLR location referencing standard.

GEWI developer Thomas Rothe, who also serves as Group Chairman of TISA’s TMC location table release team, attended the conference along with over 90 others with interest in the navigation and traffic market. The attendance was higher than expected and indicated strong interest in OpenLR™ and a recognition of the many advantages of OpenLR™ which could well be the popular method for on-the-fly location referencing in the future.

Several industry experts presented on a variety of topics and projects surrounding OpenLR™ including acquisition of public data, TPEG implementation, and methods to increase the success rate of accurately matching between different maps.
The success rate is already quite good, with successful matching in 96.8% of cases between TomTom and HERE maps.

GEWI will fully implement OpenLR™ into the TIC product by early 2014 which means that location referencing technology will be fully integrated into all of the main TIC features and may be purchased for use in projects in all TIC markets.

For more information about OpenLR™, please contact thomas.rothe@gewi.com.
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