Automatic vehicle location database (Department of Transportation)
| Submitted | July 10, 2013 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Phil Mocek
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to RCW Ch. 42.56 (Public Records Act), I hereby request the following records:
Full and complete database of automatic vehicle location (AVL) data in its native electronic format, with related metadata, including database schema.
I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as I believe this request is in the public interest. The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.
In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Phil Mocek
From: Davis, Melissa
Dear Mr. Mocek,
This email is to notify you the Washington State Department of Transportation is in receipt of your public records request located below. Attached you should find an acknowledgement letter to said request.
As the attached letter states, your request is being forwarded to Chris Barnes, whose contact information is located within the letter. He will be your point of contact, pertaining to this request, from this point forward.
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on July 10, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thank you for your help.
From: Barnes, Chris
Good afternoon Mr. Moeck,
We have located an AVL database our department keeps, known as the WinterOps database. This database contains point location check-ins from trucks wired up with AVL controllers since 10-2007. Not all trucks have reported since 2007 as we have added them to the system as equipment was installed. So some trucks have been reporting since 2007 and some for only a couple months. 379 trucks are currently active in the database truck table with the following types:
Incident Response Vehicles (12 Trucks)
Highway Maintenance Work Trucks With Special Bodies (4 Trucks) Highway Maintenance Work Trucks (10 Trucks) Dump Trucks/ Snow Plows (291 Trucks) Specialized Heavy Trucks (55 Trucks) Sweeping Trucks (6 Trucks) Asphalt Trucks (1 Truck)
We work with several different vendors for the equipment on these trucks, they collect the information and then we pull it from their servers and put in the WinterOps database. Depending on the type of truck we collection such information as:
Air and Ground Temps
Driver Information
Location (Speed, Heading, and if we can determine it, location on our SR system) Materials (If the truck is spreading materials, what kind and at what rate) Conditions (The driver has the ability to send road conditions and sky conditions, not all records have these since it is not automatically collected) Other Driver Sent Codes ( Our vendors have data terminal boxes that allow the driver to send other messages to the database, examples of these could be ' Disabled Vehicles' for an Incident Response Vehicle or 'Catch Basin Cleaned' for a vactor truck)
It is important to know that the trucks simply send a point record on where they are and what they are doing at that moment in time. We then use a nightly processes to summarize all those points into our summary tables which show what a truck was doing over a section of highway for reporting and queries.
This database is 98 GB, and we are unable to provide it to you via email attachment, on a CD/DVD, or via our external server. If you are interested in receiving this database in its native format, with related metadata, including database schema, as you requested you will need to provide a storage device (such as an external hard drive)capable of storing the database as requested.
Please let me know if you are interested in receiving the database. If so we can arrange a time and location to provide the database to you.
From: Barnes, Chris
Good morning Mr. Moeck,
I have not received a response from you in regards to the email below. Please let me know if you are interested in receiving this database. If I do not receive a response from you by close of business on Wednesday, August 14 I will consider your request complete and closed.
From: Barnes, Chris
Good afternoon Mr. Moeck,
Per my email below I now consider you request closed and complete. Attached is our closure letter.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
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