Trimble and Triona are developing a new transport network solution for Trafikverket, the Swedish Transport Administration. The solution is a key part of Trafikverket´s large-scale ANDA project, as is now in its completion phase.
ANDA is a wide-ranging efficiency measure in the Swedish Transport Administration´s BIM strategy. In December 2015 Trimble (formerly Vianova Systems) and Triona were chosen as system suppliers of the part of ANDA that manages the transport network of Swedish roads and railways.
Ambitious solution
ANDA is fundamentally requiring that all information about every bit of Trafikverket´s construction facilities must be available and usable throughout their entire lifecycle. This requirement calls for open, flexible and modern IT solutions, which in particular have to handle several different data formats and object-based model data.
ANDA will in fact integrate all the data Trafikverket is requiring to plan, design, build, operate and maintain its road and rail infrastructure. The data describe the facilities' functions, design, condition, location and component relationships etc. Some 40 IT systems in Trafikverket´s big organization are handling and storing the data today.
Complex systems architecture
“ANDA is a complex and wide-ranging solution in order to meet all the needs”, says Geir Andersen, Trimble's ANDA project manager. “To ensure excellent data flow and data consistency, a unique system architecture is being used. All data communication is going through a special data information hub and a unique integration interface. Also the new transport network solution we are developing is using this architecture.”
The actual system software though, is being based on Triona´s server platform Transport Network Engine (TNE) and Trimble´s Transport Network Toolset (TNT) – the latter based on Trimble's BIM tools Novapoint and Quadri.
The resulting, combined transport network solution partly replaces the existing system, plus adds new functionality.
Advanced editing tools
“Our part of the transport network solution represents the client side and basically consists of a model-based, visual user editing system, including model database functionality to ensure effective updating of the traffic networks”, explains Andersen. “In other words; tools for both creating new data and editing and managing existing information about the road and rail networks. The end users are mainly the Transport Administration`s own professionals having operational and maintenance responsibilities.”
Targeted development
“Our TNT solution is based on the experience we have gained through similar application development projects in the Nordics”, he continues. “In Norway we have been a key contributor to the development of the National Road Data Bank (NRDB) for many years, both on the database and client side. NRDB is a Quadri-based database with detailed information about all of the country's roads, and is used actively in the daily management of them. Over the past year we have also been involved in the modernization of an equivalent road database for Trafikverket in Sweden.”
ISO standard-based
Trimble´s TNT solution is a generic and configurable toolkit that can be adapted to any transport network in which information is stored in a node-link structure. The layout follows an international ISO standard for how the models should be built up, stored and function. Quadri is built on an advanced version of this data model and is therefore supporting all transport networks with such a structure.
Nearing completion
In the ANDA project Trimble has developed a customized version of this to meet the specifications of Trafikverket.
“After an intensive development process for a few months, we delivered our first version of the transport network solution in September 2016, quite according to plan and with zero remarks from Trafikverket”, says Geir Andersen.
The whole system solution is supposed to be completed during the summer of 2017.
Rail and Coastal Administrations also
Belonging to the story is also that Trimble and Triona now have got similar transport network solution contracts going on with Bane NOR (formerly the Norwegian Rail Administration) and the Norwegian Coastal Administration (NCA).
