Minnerva has provided specialist input in work for Transport for London concerning the specification of data systems for use with the major LATS 2001 transport surveys for London

This work has focused on using state of the art approaches and emerging standards relating to 'metadata', that is, information that helps users of the survey data to understand the data that they are using. This is an important aspect of obtaining value from the data

The project conducted a feasibility study based on LATS 1991 data to illustrate how existing information could be used and where enhancements were required

The use of XML as a flexible and transferable means of exchanging information between different systems has become important in the context of metadata. The picture on the top right illustrates the use of XML being used to structure and describe LATS 1991 information

The project went on to demonstrate the information being accessed by another system, in this case E-Tabs from Mark-IT

(Contact: Miles Logie)