Federation and orchestration: A scalable solution for EU multimodal travel information services

Abstract

Multimodal travel planning services allow travelers to plan their journey by combining different transport modes: air, rail, waterborne, coach, public transport, demand responsive transport, walking, cycling, etc. The European Union is fostering the development of cross-border multimodal planning services by establishing a regulation framework for their coordinated and coherent deployment across Member States (under the Directive 2010/40/EU). This EU regulation gives precise requirements on travel data formats (DATEX II, SIRI, NeTEx, etc.) and on fundamental and recommended system-level services, such as discovery and linking services. However, it does not (yet) pose constraints on how to implement them. In this paper, we devise and test a system architecture, named Bonvoyage, which proposes an innovative solution implementing such services. For discovery purposes, it federates nation-wide NoSQL databases that contain travel information by exploiting a novel telecommunication paradigm, Information Centric Networking. As regards linking purposes, it orchestrates the use of autonomous monomodal or multimodal routing services provided by small/big stakeholders to compose the best door-to-door journey.