Integrated information systems for highway safety management: Conceptual design for interoperability

The Korea National Police Agency, Korea Highway Corporation, Korea Regional Construction Agencies and the Seoul Metropolitan Government have developed their own highway and traffic safety information management systems. The critical problem is that these systems are not interoperable and compatible, since each agency developed its own system using different platforms and without a standardized data format. There seem to be at least two ways to make these systems interoperable and compatible: (1) consolidate all available information into one system and make all data compatible, or (2) develop standardized mechanisms, such as interfaces, or develop a platform neutral encoding. The first option is difficult to implement, if not impossible. The second approach is the subject of this paper. The purpose of this paper is to design a conceptual model for building an integrated information system for highway safety management (IHSM) which is based on platform neutral encoding. A conceptual model is presented in this paper in a unified modeling language (UML) environment. The conceptual model shall become a base for the development of a logical and physical model for implementing the intended IHSM system.