History & Background

TISA takes over the activities undertaken by the TMC Forum, the TPEG Forum and the German Mobile.Info project. It also supports standards that provide elements or a framework for services and products covering traffic and travel information including roads, public transport and related information needs such as points of interest, weather and environmental data.

TMC Forum

Founded in 1997 to represent all sectors in the development and roll-out of RDS-TMC services and products following their initial development in European Commission funded projects, the TMC Forum supported both commercial businesses and public authorities. It acted as the “keeper” of the TMC Standards and supported working groups and task forces to further develop all aspects of TMC. From the early days of technical development, the TMC Forum successfully created a truly global industry.

TPEG Forum

TPEG (Transport Protocol Expert Group) was originally developed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) with partners from industry invited to join B/TPEG in January 1998 and the TPEG Project from 2000 to 2003, validating the TPEG concepts with industrial development of TPEG client decoders. The TPEG Forum was formed in 2003/4 to continue development
and maintenance of TPEG Standards.

mobile.info

The German Mobile.Info project, led by BMW, during 2006-7 defined a set of commercial services based upon the best of TMC and TPEG capabilities which would be suitable for the first major European TPEG services.

In October 2004, the TMC Forum, TPEG Forum and Mobile.Info project created the Road Traffic Information Group as a cooperation of the three organisations. The Road Traffic Information Group’s goals were to:

• ensure a single, market led technology emerges
• build on the synergies of the two Forums and the Mobile.info project
• utilise the best of both technologies

The Road Traffic Information Group achieved improved requirements definition for developers and implementers. The benefits of this cooperation highlighted the value of a more concrete joint activity. In creating and working jointly in a new single market-driven organisation, the aims and objectives of the traffic information industry will be achieved more effectively, through creating synergy among previously separate member organisations, exploiting the best of TMC and TPEG as technologies, providing a single platform to openly discuss new requirements, creating and maintaining a market focus and ensuring one consistent set of standards for the future. This joint activity has now been launched as TISA.