NTCIP Center-to-Field Standards Group
Overview
The National Transportation Communications for ITS Protocol (NTCIP) family of standards, created jointly by AASHTO, ITE and NEMA, addresses primarily the interfaces between a transportation management center, the ITS field devices it manages, and other centers. They provide both the rules for communicating (called protocols) and the vocabulary (called objects, data elements, and messages) necessary to exchange information between ITS systems.
The NTCIP Center-to-Field (NTCIP C2F) Group of Standards addresses the communications protocols between a center and the ITS field devices it manages. The family includes the communications profiles that cover the interfaces between a traffic management center and dynamic message signs, ramp meters, environmental sensors, CCTVs, and other field equipment under its control. These protocols are common across all Center-to-Field interfaces in the National ITS Architecture, and rather than repeat the entire list for each architecture flow, we have created this summary entry – the NTCIP C2C Group of communications standards.
The "vocabulary" (objects) is specific to the actual architecture flow in the National ITS Architecture and is therefore mapped to the corresponding Data Object standard. In the example above, "NTCIP 1203: Object Definitions for Dynamic Message Signs (DMS)" standard would be mapped to the specific control and data flows between the Traffic Management Subsystem and the Roadway DMS equipment.
In order to satisfy a wide spectrum of system and regional communications requirements, Center-to-Field ITS deployments should each implement the combinations of the following NTCIP C2F communications protocols that best meet their needs.
This Group includes the following Standards Activities: